The Harbor of Doubt Part 36

"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 pa.s.s 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 st.i.tch of canvas, trusting to luck and the Providence that watches over fishermen that the compa.s.s is good and that no blundering coasters will get in the way.

When dawn broke wild and dirty, the _Charming La.s.s_ 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 _La.s.s_ 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 oak.u.m 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.

By herself and loaded only with ballast, the _Nettie_ was a better sailor in a beating game, for she was older and heavier than the _Charming La.s.s_. But now she had but a thousand quintal of fish compared to the sixteen hundred of her rival. This difference gave the _La.s.s_ much needed stability without which she could never have hoped to win from the Burns schooner.

The two were, therefore, about equally matched, and it was evident that the contest would resolve itself into one of sail-carrying, seamanship, and nerve.

"That other feller's comin' up fast!" said Pete Ellinwood, and Code looked back to see the strange schooner looming larger and larger in his wake. He knew that no vessel in the Grande Mignon fleet could ever have caught the _La.s.s_ the way he had been driving her, and yet she was not near enough for him to get a good view of her.

"If she's a fisherman," said Code, "I'll pull the _La.s.s_ out of water before she beats us in."

It was killing work, the last beat home.

"Hard a-lee!" would come the command, and some men would go down into the smother of the lee rail and haul in or slack away sheets, while others at the mastheads would shift top- and staysail tacks.

Her head would swing, there would be a minute of thrashing and roaring of gear, and the gale would leap into her sails and bend her down on her side again. Then away she would go.

The station of those on deck was a good two-handed grip on the ringbolts under the weather-rail, where, so great was the slope of the deck, they clung desperately for fear of sliding down and into the swirling torrent.

Hour after hour the _Nettie_ and the _La.s.s_ fought it out, and hour after hour the gale increased. Hurricane warnings had been issued all along the coast, and not a vessel ventured out, but these stanch fishing vessels cared not a whit.

It was evident, however, that something must give. Human ingenuity had not constructed a vessel that could stand such driving. Even Pete Ellinwood began to lose his heartiness as the _La.s.s_ went down and stayed down longer with each vicious squall.

"Shut up, Pete!" said Code, when the mate started to speak. "No sail comes off but what blows off, and while there's all sail on the _Nettie_ I carry all sail if I heave her down for it. Watch him, he'll break. Burns is yellow."

The words were a prophecy. He had hardly uttered them when down came the great balloon jib of the _Nettie B._ At once the _La.s.s_ began to gain in great leaps and bounds. They were fifty miles from home and two miles only separated them.

But fortune had not finished with Code. Half an hour later there came a great sound of tearing like the volley of small arms, and the _La.s.s's_ balloon jib ripped loose and soared to heaven like some gigantic wounded bird.

"Let it go, curse it," growled Code. "Anyway, I didn't take it down."

The loss of her big jib was the only thing that saved the _La.s.s_ from being hove down completely, for two hours later the gale had reached its height, and she was laboring like a drunken man under her staysail, topsail, and four lowers.

Twenty miles from home and the two schooners were abreast, tacking together on the long leeward reaches and the short windward ones, as they made across the Bay of Fundy.

"Look at her comin' like a racehorse!" cried Ellinwood again, and this time Code recognized the vessel that was pursuing them. It was the mystery schooner, and in all his life at sea Code had never seen a ship fly as that one was flying then.

"Wonder what she's up to now?" he asked vaguely. But he gave no further thought to the matter, for the _Nettie B._ claimed all his attention. Suddenly from between the masts of the Burns schooner a great flutter of white appeared as though some one had hung a huge sheet from her stay.

"Ha, I told you he was yellow!" shouted Code in glee. "Somebody's cut away one edge of the stays'l. Now we've got 'em!"

And they had; for within a quarter of an hour they left the _Nettie B._ astern, finally defeated, Nat Burns's last act of treachery gone for nothing.

But the mystery schooner would not be denied. Though the _La.s.s_ made her seventeen knots, the wonderful Mallaby schooner did her twenty, with everything spread in that gale; and when the white lighthouse of Swallowtail Point was in plain sight through the murk, she swept by like a magnificent racer and beat the _Charming La.s.s_ to moorings by twenty minutes.

Half an hour behind Schofield came the Burns boat, but in that time Code Schofield had already hurried ash.o.r.e in his dory and clinched his sale price with Bill Boughton, who also a.s.sured him of the bonus offered for the first vessel in.

Like Code, the first thing Nat did, when his schooner had come up into the wind with jib and foresail on the run, was to take a dory ash.o.r.e.

In it, besides himself, was a man. These two encountered Code just as he came out of Boughton's store.

The second, who was tall and broad-shouldered, threw back his coat and displayed a government shield. Then he laid his hand on Code's arm.

"Captain Schofield," he said, "you are under arrest!"

CHAPTER XXIX

A FATAL LETTER

For the last of many days the light-housekeeper had watched from his aerie for the coming of the fleet--and had not been disappointed.

His horse and buggy stood by the tower doorstep, and into it he leaped, whipping up the horse with the same motion. Then down the road he had flown like Paul Revere rousing the villagers, and followed by an excited, half-hysterical procession of women and children.

So thick had been the murk and scud that he had only caught sight of the approaching leader while she was a bare two miles off the point, and even when Nat had landed the crowd was momentarily being augmented from all the houses along the King's Road and as far south as Castalia.

When the officer of the law laid his hand on Code's arm and spoke the words that meant imprisonment and disgrace in the very heart of the village festival, a groan went up that caused the officer to look sharply about him.

Despite the work Nat had done on his brief stop at the Head, Code was the hero of the day, for he had come in with the first cargo of fish and had won the distinction of being the first to effect the salvation of the island.

"Oh, let him go!" said a voice. "He ain't goin' to run away!" Nat, standing behind his captive, turned sharply upon the offender.

"No, you bet he ain't!" he snapped. "He's been doin' that too long already. He's got somethin' to answer for this time."

Into the harbor at that moment swept the Tanners' _Rosan_, and abreast of her the steamer from St. John's. Five minutes behind came Jed Martin's _Herring Bone_, and the first of the fleet was safely in.