TREACHERY
Next morning at breakfast, about four o'clock, Code told his crew the
situation. He knew his men thoroughly and had been friends with most
of them all his life.
"There's likely to be trouble, and I may be taken away, but if that
happens Pete will tell you what to do. Don't sight Swallowtail until
your salt is all wet. Bring home a topping load and you'll share
topping."
Code did not go out that morning. Instead, he tried to shake off his
troubles long enough to study the fish--which was his job on the
_Charming Lass_.
While not a Bijonah Tanner, Code bade fair to be his equal at
Bijonah's age. He came of a father with an instinct for fish, and he
had inherited that instinct fully. Under Jasper he had learned much,
but it was another matter to have some one on hand to read the signs
rather than being cast upon his own resources.
The fish, from the trawl-line and Pete's reports of dory work, had
been running rather big. This pleased him, but he knew it could not
last; and he sat with his old chart spread out before him on the
deck--a chart edged with his father's valuable penciled notes.
Suddenly, while in the almost subconscious state that he achieved when
very "fishy," the persistent voice of the cook broke through the wall
of unconsciousness.
"Smoke on the port quarter, skipper! Smoke on the port quarter,
skipper!"
The phrase came with persistent repetition until Code was fully alive
to its meaning and glanced over his left shoulder.
Above the line of dark blue that was the ocean, and in the light blue
that was the sky, was etched a tree-shaped brown smudge.
Steamer smudges were not an unusual sight, for not fifty miles east
was the northern track of the great ocean steamers--a track which they
were gradually approaching as they made their berths. But a steamer
smudge over the port quarter, with the _Lass's_ bow headed due north,
was an entirely different thing.
Code went below and brought up an ancient firearm. This he discharged
while the cook ran a trawl-tub to the truck. It was the prearranged
signal for Pete Ellinwood to come in.
As Code waited he had no doubt that smoke was from a revenue cutter
or cruiser from Halifax with his arrest warrant.
There was a stiff westerly breeze, and Code, glancing up at the cloud
formations, saw that there would be a beautiful racing half-gale on by
noon.
"What a chance to run for it!" he thought, but resolutely put the idea
from his mind.
Pete came in with a scowl on his face, cursing everything under the
sun, and especially a fisherman's life. When told of the smoke smudge
he evinced comparatively little interest.
"We'll find out what she is when she gets here. What I'd like to know
is, what's the matter with our bait?"
"Bait gone wrong again?" asked Code anxiously, his brows knitting.
"That stuff on the trawl wasn't the only bad bait, then."
"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 shellfish 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
_Lass_, 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 passionately. "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 snatched 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 ashore 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.
"Hello!" 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 brass 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
_Lass_.
"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 glasses.
But Code did not need any glasses 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 glasses. It was on
Schofield's tongue to reveal the identity of the pursued when
Ellinwood yelled:
"Good Heavens! Skipper! She has _Charming Lass_ printed in new gold
letters under her counter!"
"What?"
"As I live, Code. _Charming Lass_, as plain as day! What's happening
here to-day? What is this?" Code snatched the glasses 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 LASS
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 glasses to his eyes and watched the mysterious
schooner and the pursuing vessel disappear.