Blueskin’s Plot
The presence of the Aberstour Sea Scouts’ yacht _Kestrel_ in Dartmouth
Harbour attracted a fair amount of interest, but none more than that
shown by a tall, heavily built, and loose-jowled deck-hand on board the
S.S. _Lumberjack_.
Leaning over the bulwark of the tramp and shading his face with his
hands, the man gazed so intently at the newly arrived yacht that one of
his shipmates was struck by his studied interest.
“Lor’, Blueskin!” he exclaimed. “Wot’s strikin’ your fancy now? Ain’t
you never seen a crowd o’ Sea Scoutses afore?”
Carlo Bone spat contemptuously into the scuppers.
“Axin’ for trouble, them is,” he remarked.
“An’ so’ll you be if the Old Man sees you hangin’ on to the slack,”
rejoined the other. “Bear a hand an’ help shift this ’ere dunnage.”
The S.S. _Lumberjack_ was lying within a hundred yards of the mooring
which the _Kestrel_ had picked up. She had arrived a few days before,
having developed engine trouble in that antiquated box which required
all the skill and patience of a dour Scots engineer to take the old
tramp along at even a modest five knots.
The sight of the _Kestrel_ acted like a red rag to a mad bull as far as
Blueskin Bone was concerned. The mere knowledge that had it not been for
“them Sea Scoutses” he might have become the owner of the craft never
ceased to anger him. Even when, acting upon the idea that Polkebo was
getting too hot for him, he had shipped aboard the S.S. _Lumberjack_ his
resentment did not die down; it merely smouldered, to be revived to
white heat when, quite unexpectedly, the _Kestrel_ came in with the
flood tide from the boisterous waters of the English Channel.
“If she ain’t mine,” he muttered, “she won’t be nobody’s—not if I can
’elp it. Too mighty cute those chaps wur last time—when they thought as
I wur about. If they don’t see I, maybe they won’t be so plaguey
wideawake.”
For the rest of his watch Blueskin spent most of the time taking furtive
glances at the _Kestrel_ and cudgelling his brains to devise some
cunning plan to gain his ends. In order to conceal himself from
observation from the _Kestrel_, he even declined to go ashore that
evening, much to his shipmates’ surprise.
Long after the hands had turned in that night Blueskin lay awake. When
at length silence reigned in the stuffy fo’c’sle of the S.S.
_Lumberjack_, Carlo Bone slipped out of his bunk, barefooted and wearing
only a pair of canvas trousers.
It was a pitch dark night. Heavy clouds overspread the sky. A hard blow
was raging out in the Channel, and even the land-locked waters of
Dartmouth Harbour were foam-flecked. The flood tide was on the point of
turning. In fact, all the shipping at anchor on the Kingswear side were
riding head to wind. Eighty yards or so away, the riding-light of the
_Kestrel_ see-sawed as the yacht rolled and strained at her borrowed
moorings.
Groping about in the darkness, Blueskin soon found what he wanted: an
iron bucket to which he had previously attached a short length of
flexible steel wire. The bucket he lowered over the ship’s side by means
of a piece of spun yarn until it hung just above the surface.
Giving a final look round to reassure himself that no one was on deck,
Blueskin lowered himself into the water. Then, casting off the lashing
that held the bucket, he struck out for the _Kestrel_, pushing the
bucket in front of him.
Like most Cornishmen, Blueskin Bone was a powerful swimmer, and an
expert diver. It was mere child’s-play to him to swim to the yacht’s
stern, partly fill the bucket to make it float upright, and then to dive
with the free end of the flexible wire in his grasp.
Blueskin had seen the _Kestrel_ high and dry so often that he was well
acquainted with the way in which her rudder fastenings were fixed. In
the darkness the task he had in hand presented no difficulty. Quickly he
passed the end of the wire between the rudder and the stern-post just
above the lower pintle, and came to the surface with the steel rope
still in his hand.
His next act was to bend the end of the wire to the handle of the
bucket, so that both extremities were secured close together. The bucket
was now firmly attached to the _Kestrel’s_ rudder by the doubled parts
of the wire.
“That’ll ’old till the crows come ’ome,” he muttered, as he tugged at
the last hitch of the rope.
Tilting the bucket, Blueskin allowed it to fill and sink. It was now
suspended at the end of a few feet of steel wire immediately under the
yacht’s stern-post.
Having accomplished what he had set out to do, Carlo Bone swam back to
the _Lumberjack_, swarmed up her side, removed and wrung out his
trousers, and crept back to his bunk.
“Reckon I ain’t cried quits wi’ ’em yet,” he muttered, recalling with
mingled feelings of humiliation and anger the incident when he was
knocked out by a mere youth. “’Tany rate, I’ve done summat t’wards
gettin’ my own back. Like as not them’ll have a leadin’ wind outer ’ere
when them starts. An’ a fair tide. But when it comes tu goin’ about like
in the Range, that there bucket’ll make ’em miss stays. They’ll be fair
on the rocks afore they knows where they be.”
There was deep cunning in Carlo Bone’s plan. He counted upon the
_Kestrel_ getting under way with a fair wind and a fair tide. The crew
would not be likely to notice that they were towing a bucket under the
stern, although the drag would be considerable. But in the Narrows, at
the entrance to the harbour, the baffling wind and the set of the tidal
current would compel the _Kestrel_ to attempt at least one tack. Then
the impediment caused by the bucket would be more than sufficient to
make her “miss stays,” and in that hopeless state she would be driven
upon the saw-edged rocks to lee’ard almost before her crew realised
their danger.
Chuckling sardonically, Blueskin lay awake in his bunk until nearly
dawn—the dawn of a day on which, if his plans went aright, the
_Kestrel_ would ignominiously end her career upon the rock-strewn coast
of Devon.