It seemed to take a long time to hoist that sail, but at last it was
well up, the yard creaking against the mast; and standing on their
dignity now, and keeping the old man at a distance, the boys made no
offer to take the sheet or steer, but let Daygo pass them as they sat
amidships, one on each side, and he seated himself, hauled in the sheet,
and thrust an oar over the stern to steer.
There was a nice breeze now, they were only about a mile from the shore,
and as the boat danced merrily through the little waves a feeling of joy
and exultation, to which the boys had long been strangers, filled their
breasts. They took long, hungry looks at the shore, and then at the
cutter racing along towards the great gull rock, at the schooner
careening over as she ran on under all the canvas she could bear; and
then back at the lugger, which by comparison seemed to limp along, with
a scrub of a spar hoisted as a jury mast, far astern, in place of the
fallen mizen, so as to steady her steering.
Then they looked at each other again, those two, as they sat face to
face, neither speaking, and carefully avoiding even a glance at Daygo,
feeling as they did the awkwardness of their position, and averse to
meeting the old scoundrel's eye.
Not that they would have met it, for Daygo was as full of discomfort as
they, and with his eyes screwed up face one maze of wrinkles, he stared
through between them as if looking at the prow, but really at the big
patch of canvas in his sail.
For, as Daygo put it to himself, he was on the awkwardest bit of lee
shore that he had ever sailed by in his life.
He had, as was surmised by the cook, caught sight of the Revenue cutter
sailing by the north side of the Crag, and hurried down to his boat to
warn Jacques or his companion; but, upon finding himself too late, he
was making for home again, thinking that, as Jacques was taken and his
lugger a prize to the cutter--which looked determined to follow up the
schooner, probably to take her too--there would be no owner for the
contraband goods still left in the cavern, unless that owner proved to
be himself. There were two others, he mused--two who knew of the place
and its treasure; but Captain Jacques was, according to the old
fisherman's theory, not the kind of man to stick at trifles when such
great interests were at stake; and he felt quite satisfied that the two
boys would never be seen at Cormorant Crag again. Some accident would
happen to them--what accident was no business of his, he argued. They
had got themselves into a terrible mess through their poking and prying
about, and they must put up with the consequences. They might have
fallen off the cliff when getting sea-birds' eggs, or they might have
been carried away by one of the currents when bathing, or they might
have been capsized and drowned while they stole his boat--he called it
"stole"--in any one of which cases, he said to himself, they'd never
have come back to the Crag again, and it wouldn't have been any business
of his, so he wasn't going to worry his brains. Old Jarks had grabbed
'em, and when he grabbed anything he didn't let it go again.
Joe Daygo was a slow thinker, and all this took him a long time to
hammer out; and he had just settled it comfortably, on his way home,
when he caught sight of the pilot flag flying, and paid no heed.
"Don't ketch me showing 'em the way through the Narrers to ketch the
_Shark_!" he growled; and he kept on his way till the imperative mood
present tense was tried, and then he made for the side of the cutter, to
receive what was to him a regular knock-down blow, or, as he put it, a
wind taking him on a very dangerous lee shore.
So the old fisherman did not look at his passengers, but began thinking
hard again. He couldn't take those two home, he said to himself, for,
if he did, at their first words he'd be seized by some one or every one,
for they all hated him for being so well off, and monopolising so much
of the lobster catching, especially Jemmy Carnach. Then Sir Francis
Ladelle and the Doctor would come; he'd be locked up, sent by the smack
over to England, and be tried, and all his savings perhaps be seized.
Just, too, when he had a chance of doubling them by taking the contents
of the cave.
He had arrived at this point with great difficulty when the strange
silence on board the boat, which had so far only been broken by the
lapping of the water and the creaking of the yard, was broken by Vince,
who cried excitedly, as he stood up in the boat:
"Look, look, Mike! Nearly everybody's yonder on the cliff. They've
heard the firing and the explosion, and they're watching the cutter
chase the schooner."
Mike rose too, and with beating hearts the two boys stood trying to make
out who was on the look-out; but the distance was too great to
distinguish faces. Still they stood, steadying each other by clapping
hands on shoulders, quite unconscious of the fact that the old man was
now gazing at them with a very peculiar expression of countenance, that
foreboded anything but good.
All at once, they both lurched and nearly fell, for Daygo's mind was
made up, and he thrust his oar deep down, changing the boat's course
suddenly, and making the sail flap.
"Here, what are you doing?" cried Vince, forced by this to speak to the
old man at last.
"Think I want to run my boat into that curran' an' get on the rocks?
Sit down, will you, and keep outer the way of the sheet."
For answer the boys went forward, quite out of his way, and the boat
rushed on again for some ten minutes before they spoke again, though
they had been looking about with gathering uneasiness, for they were
growing suspicious, but ashamed to speak because the idea seemed to be
absurd.