The Chase of the “Dido.”
REUBE uttered a cry of something like despair.
“Now, old man, what’s the matter with you?” queried Will, reprovingly.
“Do you suppose the _Dido’s_ gone? Why, you old chump, we’ll take one of
the other boats and go after her. With this wind we’ll catch her before
she goes half a dozen miles. She won’t get past the Joggins, anyway,
I’ll bet you a red herring!”
Reube’s face brightened, beamed broadly, and resumed its old boyish
frankness.
“Why, that’s so!” said he. “That’s just what we’ll do. What a perfect
fool I’d be sometimes, Will, if you didn’t keep an eye on me!”
That half a mile across the marsh proved a long one owing to the many
detours which our runners, now trotting slowly and deliberately, were
forced to make by the windings of the full creek. At last they reached
the landing place where the _Dido_ had been moored. About the rickety
old wharf stood four or five high reels, skeletons of light gray wood
wound with the dark-stained folds of the shad nets. The fishing season
was right at hand, but had not yet begun. Around the boats and the reels
were many half-obliterated footprints, left by the feet of those who had
been winding the nets and pitching the seams of the boats. Of fresh
tracks there was but one set—the tracks of someone with long, narrow
feet, who walked without turning out his toes. To these tracks Reube
pointed with grim significance of gesture.
“Yes,” said Will, “I understand. Did you ever see a plainer signature
than Mart Gandy makes with his feet?”
The smallest of the fishing boats at the wharf was a light “pinkie”—a
name given by the Tantramar fishermen to a special kind of craft with
the stern pointed like the stem. The pinkie, painted red and white
instead of blackened with tar like the other boats, was a good sailer.
She belonged to Barnes, the owner of the red bull; and to Reube’s
judicial mind it seemed appropriate that she should be taken without
leave. There was a further inducement in the fact that she could be got
afloat more easily than any of the other boats. The tide had fallen so
that her keel was high and dry; and the fine mud of Tantramar gripped it
with astonishing tenacity. But after a few minutes of such straining as
made the veins stand out on Will’s forehead, and brought a redness about
Reube’s steel-gray eyes, she was afloat.
Up went her dainty jib; up went her broad white mainsail; and presently
the red-and-white pinkie with Reube at the helm was nimbly threading the
sharp curves of the creek. After a succession of short tacks the channel
straightened, and heeling far over with the strong wind on her quarter
the pinkie ran into the open with the tawny surf hissing at her gunwale.
Reube held his course till they were a couple of hundred yards out,
dreading some hungry shoals he knew of. Then he let out the sheet, eased
up on the tiller, and put the pinkie’s head straight down the bay on the
_Dido’s_ track. Will loosened out the jib, belayed it, and lay down on
the cuddy in its shadow. The _Dido_ was out of sight beyond the rocks
and high oak trees of Wood Point.
A stern chase, as has been said from of old, is a long chase; and while
the red-and-white pinkie was scudding before the wind and shearing the
yellow waves with her keen bow, Reube and Will had to curb their
impatience. They did not even whistle for more wind, for they had all
the wind the pinkie could well endure. When their ears had grown used to
the slap and crumbling rush of the foam-wave past their gunwale they
spoke of Mart Gandy.
Reube Dare’s father, whose farm adjoined that of the Gandys, had got
himself embroiled with old Gandy over the location of the dividing line.
While Reube was yet a very small boy old Gandy had pulled down the
dilapidated line fence during one of Captain Dare’s absences, and had
put up a new one which encroached seriously on the Dares’ best field. On
Captain Dare’s return he expostulated with Gandy; and finding
expostulation useless he quietly shifted back the fence. Then his ship
sailed on a long voyage to the Guano Islands of the Pacific; and while
he was scorching off the rainless coasts of northern Peru, Gandy again
took possession of the coveted strip of field. From this voyage Captain
Dare came back with broken health. He gave up his ship, settled down on
the farm overlooking the marshes, and called in the arm of the law to
curb old Gandy’s aggression. The fence had by this time been moved
backward and forward several times, each time leaving behind a redder
and more threatening line of wrath. When the case came into court the
outcome was a surprise to both contestants. There were rummaging out of
old titles and unearthing of old deeds, till Captain Dare’s lawyer made
it clear not only that Gandy’s claim was unfounded, but also that before
the dispute arose Gandy had been occupying some three acres of the old
Dare property. The original grant, made a hundred years earlier to
Captain Dare’s grandfather, required that the line should run down the
middle of old Gandy’s sheep pasture—a worthless tract, but one which
now acquired value in Gandy’s eye. Down the pasture forthwith was the
new fence run, for Captain Dare, fired to obstinacy by his neighbor’s
wanton aggression, would take no less than his rights. Then, the victory
assured to him, the captain died, leaving to his widow and his boy a
feud to trouble their peace. The farm was productive, but for some years
old Gandy had vexed them with ceaseless and innumerable small
annoyances. When the old man sank into imbecility, then his son Mart, a
swarthy and furtive stripling, who betrayed the blood of a far-off
Indian ancestor, took up the quarrel with new bitterness. In Mart
Gandy’s dark and narrow soul, which was redeemed from utter
worthlessness by his devotion to his family, hatred of the Dares stood
as a sacred duty. It was his firm faith that his father had been tricked
by a conspiracy between judge, jury, and lawyers. The persistency of his
hate and the cunning of his strokes had been a steady check upon the
prosperity of Reube and his mother.
In answer to a remark of Reube on this subject Will exclaimed, “But
you’ve got him all right this time, old man. There can be no difficulty
in identifying those footprints.”
Reube laughed somewhat sarcastically.
“Do you suppose,” he inquired, “that the tide is going to leave them as
they are while we go after the _Dido_, fetch her back, and then go and
get those holes in the mud examined by the authorities?”
“Well, perhaps my suggestion was hasty,” acknowledged Will.
After an hour’s run Wood Point was left behind, and there was the _Dido_
not a mile ahead and well inshore. She had been delayed in the eddies of
the cove below the Point. Reube gave a shout of joy and twisted his helm
to starboard, while Will warned him to look out for the mud flats with
which the cove was choked.
“O,” said Reube, confidently, “I know the place like a book.”
The red-and-white pinkie was now rapidly overhauling the vagrant craft
when a stiff current caught the latter and she began to race along the
curve of the farther shore. Reube was anxious to catch her before she
should round the next headland, and get back into rough water. The
headland was a low, humped promontory of mingled plaster rocks and
yellowish sand, without a tree upon its grassy crest. Shifting his
course to intercept the _Dido_, Reube steered the pinkie straight for
the point. Just then the _Dido_ was seen to give a lurch, stop short,
and keel over to the gunwale.
“She’s run aground!” cried Will.
“But we’ve got her safe and will sail her back on next tide,” said
Reube, heaving a sigh of relief as he saw that his beloved craft stood
still, refusing to be rolled over by the push of the yellow tide upon
her ribs.
The pinkie was sailing at a great pace.
“Better take in the jib, Will,” said Reube.
Will sprang up to obey. Just as he rose there was a staggering shock.
The pinkie buried her nose in a hidden mudbank. The waves piled over her
gunwales; the mast bent without breaking, like the brave, tough timber
it was; and Will shot overboard headlong into the foam.