The Harbor of Doubt
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“Don’t believe there’s anybody’ll carry sixteen men out of here, is they?” came a voice from over in the corner.
“Sure!” The rumble and bellow of the reply denoted Pete Ellinwood where he sat on a cracker-box, his six and a half feet of length sprawled halfway from one counter to the other. “There’s Nat Burns’s Hettie B. She’ll carry sixteen, and so will Code Schofield’s Laughing Lass– mebbe more.”
“Huh! Yes, if he can git ’em,” sneered a voice.
“Git ’em! O’ course he’ll git ’em. Why not?” demanded Ellinwood, turning upon the other belligerently.
“Wal,” replied the other, “they do say there’s men in this village, and farther south, too, that wouldn’t sail with Code, not fer a thousand dollars and all f’und.”
“Them that says it are fools,” declared Ellinwood.
“An’ liars!” cut in Bijonah Tanner hotly. “Why won’t they sail with the lad? He can handle a schooner as well as you, Burt, and better.”
“Yas,” said the other contemptuously; “nobody’s ever forgot the way he handled the old May 64 Schofield. Better not play with fire, Bige, or you’ll get your hands burned.”
Pete Ellinwood got upon his feet deliberately. He was the biggest and most powerful man in the village, despite his forty-five years, and his “ableness” in a discussion–physical or otherwise–was universally respected.
“Look here you, Burt, an’ all the rest of you fellers. I’ve got something to say. Fer consid’able time now I’ve heard dirty talk about Code and the May Schofield– dirty talk an’ nothin’ more. Now, if any of you can prove that Code did anything but try and save the old schooner, let’s hear you do it. If not, shut up! I don’t want to hear no more of that talk.”
There was silence for a while as all hands sought to escape the gray, accusing eye that wandered slowly around the circle. Then from back in the shadow somewhere a voice said sneeringly:
“What ax you got to grind, Pete?”
A laugh went round, for it was common talk that, since the death of Jasper Schofield, Pete had expressed his admiration for Ma Schofield in more than one way.
“I got this ax to grind, Andrew,” replied Ellinwood calmly, “that I’m signed on as mate in the Charming Lass, an’ I believe the boy is as straight and as good a sailor as anybody on the island.” This was news to the crowd, and the men digested it a minute in silence.
“How many men ye got sailin’ with ye?” asked one who had not spoken before.
“Five outside the skipper an’ me,” was the reply, “an’ I cal’late we’ll fill her up in a day or so. Seven men can sail her like a witch, but they won’t fill her hold very quick. She’ll take fifteen hundred quintal easy, or I judge her wrong.”
A prolonged whistle from outside interrupted the discussion, and one man going to the door announced that it had stopped raining. All hands got up and prepared to go back to work. Only Bijonah Tanner remained to buy some groceries from Boughton.
“Steamer’s early to-day,” said the storekeeper, glancing at his watch. “She’s bringin’ me a lot of salt from St. John’s, and I guess I can get it into the shed to-night.”
Having satisfied Tanner, he went out of the store the back way and left the captain alone filling his pipe. A short blast of the whistle told him that the steamer was tied up, and idly he lingered to see who had come to the island.
The passengers, to reach the King’s Road, were obliged to go past the corner of the general store, and Bijonah stood on the low, wooden veranda, watching them.
Some two dozen had gone when his eye was attracted by a pale, thin youth in a light-gray suit and Panama hat. He thought nothing of him at first except to remark his clothes, but as he came within short vision Tanner gave a grunt of astonishment and bit through the reed stem of his corn-cob pipe.
He recognized the youth as the one he had seen in St. John’s and had referred to as the secretary to the president of the Marine Insurance Company.
Instantly the old man’s mind flashed back to what he had heard only a week before, which he had told Code. He stood looking after the stranger as though spell-bound, his slow mind groping vainly for some explanation of his presence in Freekirk Head.
He felt instinctively that it must be in connection with the case of Code Schofield and the May, and his feeling was corroborated a moment later when, from behind the trunk of a big pine-tree, Nat Burns stepped forward and greeted the other. They had apparently met before, for they shook hands cordially and continued westward along the King’s Road.
A few steps brought them opposite the gate to the Schofield cottage, and Bijonah, following their motions like a hawk, saw Nat jerk his thumb in the direction of the house as they walked past.
That was enough for Tanner. He was convinced now that the insurance man had come to carry out the threat made in St. John’s, and that Nat Burns was more intimately connected with the scheme than he had at first supposed.
Bijonah set down his package of groceries on the counter inside and turned away toward the wharf where the Charming Lass was tied up for a final trimming. She already had her salt aboard and most of her provisions and was being given her final touches by Pete Ellinwood, Jimmie Thomas, and the other members of the crew that had signed on to sail in her.
Tanner hailed Ellinwood from the wharf and beckoned so frantically that the big man swarmed up the rigging to the dock as though he were going aloft to reef a topsail in a half a gale.
“Code’s in a pile of trouble,” said the old man, and went on briefly to narrate the whole circumstance of the insurance company’s possible move. “That feller came on the steamer this afternoon, an’ if he serves Code with the summons or attachment or whatever it is, it’s my idea that the Lass will never round the Swallowtail for the Banks. Where is the boy?”
“Went up to Castalia to see a couple of men who he thought he might get for the crew, but I don’t think Burns or any one else knows it. He wanted to make the trip on the quiet an’ get them without anybody’s knowing it if he could. But what do you cal’late to do, Bige?”
“By the Great Snood, I don’t know!” declared Tanner helplessly.
“Wal,” said Pete reassuringly, “you just let me handle this little trouble myself. We’ll have the skipper safe an’ clear if we have to commit murder to do it. Now, Bige, you just keep your mouth shut and don’t worry no more. I’ll do the rest.”
Feeling the responsibility to be in capable hands and secretly glad to escape events that might be too much for his years, Captain Tanner walked back to the road, secured his package of groceries at the store, and made his way home to the widow Sprague’s house.
For five minutes Pete Ellinwood lounged indolently against a spile, engrossed in thought. Then he put on his coat and crossed the King’s Road to the Schofield cottage.
He had hardly opened the gate when a strange youth in a gray suit and Panama hat came out of the front door and down the path. Pete recognized the newcomer from St. John’s, and the newcomer evidently recognized him.
“Ha! Captain Code Schofield, I presume,” he announced, thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket and bringing out a fistful of papers. So eager and excited was he that, unnoticed, he dropped one flimsy sheet, many times folded, into the grass.
“No, I’m not Schofield,” rumbled Ellinwood from the depths of his mighty chest. “Get along with you now!”
“Please accept service of this paper, Captain Schofield,” said the other, extending a legal-looking document, and shrugging his shoulders as though to say that Pete’s denial of identity was, of course, only natural, but could hardly be indulged.
“I’m not Schofield!” bellowed Pete, outraged. “My name’s Ellinwood, an’ anybody’ll tell you so. I won’t take your durned paper. If you want Schofield find him.”
The young man drew back, nonplussed, but might have continued his attentions had not a passer-by come to Pete’s rescue and sworn to his identity. Only then did the young lawyer–for he was that as well as private secretary–withdraw with short and grudged apologies.
Pete, growling to himself like a great bear, was starting forward to the house when his eye was caught by the folded paper that had dropped from the packet in the lawyer’s hand. He stooped, picked it up, and, with a glance about, to prove that the other was out of sight, opened it.
As he read it his eyes widened and his jaw dropped with astonishment. Twice he slowly spelled out the words before him, and then, with a low whistle and a gigantic wink, thrust the paper carefully into his pocket and pinned the pocket.
“That will be news to the lad, sure enough,” he said, continuing on his way toward the house.
The little orphan girl Josie admitted him. He found Mrs. Schofield on the verge of tears. She had just been through a long and painful interview with the newcomer, and had barely recovered from the shock of what he had to tell.
Code, since learning of what was in the air, had not told his mother, for he did not wish to alarm her unnecessarily, and was confident he would get away to the Banks before the slow-moving St. John firm took action.
Pete, smitten mightily by the distress of the comely middle-aged widow, melted to a misery of unexpressible tenderness and solicitude. In his words and actions of comfort he resembled a great, loving St. Bernard dog who had accidentally knocked down a toddling child and is desirous of making amends. Ma Schofield took note of his desire to lighten her burden, and presently permitted it to be lightened.
Then they talked over the situation, and Pete finally said:
“I’m sending Jimmie Thomas down to Castalia in his motor-dory to find Code. Of course, the skipper took his own dory, and we may meet him coming back. What we want to do is head him off an’ keep him away from here. Now, there’s no tellin’ how long he might have to stay away, an’ I’ve been figgerin’ that perhaps if you was to take him a bundle of clothes it wouldn’t go amiss.”
“I’ll do it,” announced ma sturdily. “Just you tell Jimmie to wait a quarter of an hour and I’ll be along. Now, Pete Ellinwood, listen here. What scheme have you got in your mind? I can see by your eyes that there is one.”
“May!” cried Pete reproachfully. “How could I have anythin’ in my mind without tellin’ you?”
Nevertheless, when he walked out of the cottage door it was to chuckle enormously in his black beard and call himself names that he had to deceive May.
He called Jimmie Thomas up from the duties of the paint-pot and brush, and gave him instructions as to what to do. They talked rapidly in low tones until Mrs. Schofield appeared; then Jimmie helped her into the motor-dory and both men pushed off.
“I cal’late I’ll have it all worked out when you come back, Jim,” said Pete as the engine caught the spark and the dory moved away.
Mrs. Schofield turned around and fixed her sharp, blue eyes upon the giant ashore.
“Peter!” she cried. “I knew there was some scheme. When I get back–”
But the rest was lost, for distance had overcome her voice. Ellinwood stood and grinned benignly at his goddess. Then he slapped his thigh with an eleven-inch hand and made a noise with his mouth like a man clucking to his horse.
“Sprightly as a gal, she is,” he allowed. “Dummed if she ain’t!”
CHAPTER VIII
JIMMIE THOMAS’S STRATEGY
On a chart the island of Grande Mignon bears the same relation to surrounding islands that a mother-ship bears to a flock of submarines. Westward her coast is rocky and forbidding, being nothing but a succession of frowning headlands that rise almost perpendicularly from the sea. It is one of the most desolate stretches of coast in moderate latitudes, for no one lives there, nor has ever lived there, except a few hermit dulce-pickers during the summer months.
Along the east coast, that looks across the Atlantic, are strung the villages, nestled in bays and coves. And it is out from this coast that the dozen little islands lie. First, and partially across the mouth of the bay where the fishing fleet lies, is Long Island. Then comes High Duck, Low Duck, and Big Duck. Farther south there are Ross’s, Whitehead, and Big Wood islands, not to mention spits, points, and ledges of rock innumerable and all honored with names.
It was the fact of so many treacherous ledges and reefs to be navigated safely in a four-knot tide that was agitating the half-dozen “guests” at Mis’ Shannon’s boarding-house. It need hardly be said that Mis’ Shannon was a widow, but her distinction lay in being called mis’ instead of ma.
She made a livelihood by putting up the “runners” who made periodical trips with their sample cases for the benefit of the local tradesmen, and took in occasional “rusticators,” or summer tourists who had courage enough to dare the passage of the strait in the tiny steamer.
The principal auditor of the harrowing tales that were flying about the table over the fish chowder was Mr. Aubrey Templeton, the young lawyer from St. John’s who had arrived on the steamer that afternoon. Just opposite to Mr. Templeton at the table sat Jimmie Thomas, who, being a bachelor, had made his home with Miss Shannon for the last three years. And it was Jimmie who had held the table spell-bound with his tales of danger and narrow escapes.
He had just concluded a yarn, told in all seriousness, of how a shark had leaped over the back of a dory in Whale Cove and the two men in the dory had barely escaped with their lives.
“And I know the two men it happened to,” he concluded; “or I know one of ’em; the other’s dead. Ol’ Jasper Schofield never got over the scare he got that day.”
The lawyer sat bolt upright in his chair.
“Do you know the Schofields?” he demanded of Thomas.
“Guess I ought to. I’ve been dorymate with Code when the old man was skipper. A finer young feller ain’t on this island.”
“Do you happen to know where he is?” asked Templeton. “I came to Grande Mignon on several important matters, and one of them was to see him. I’ve tried to locate the fellow, but he seems to have disappeared.”
“Why, I seen him to-day myself in Castalia!” cried Thomas. “He’s up there hirin’ men to ship with him. Said he was goin’ to stay all night. I know the very house he’s in.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think I could get there to-night?”
“You might.” Jimmie looked at his watch. “The Seal Cove mail-wagon’s gone long ago, but I’ll take you down in my motor-dory if you’ll come right now.”
Templeton did not even wait to finish his supper, but went out with Thomas immediately. A few minutes’ walk brought them to the little beach where the dory was drawn up and they were soon on their way. But before they left, Templeton scribbled a message on a piece of paper and left it with Mrs. Shannon to be given to Nat Burns, who, he said, was to call for him at half-past seven.
Thomas kept the nose of his dory pointed to the lights of several houses that gleamed across the bay. They were not, however, the lights of Castalia, which were almost invisible farther south. But Templeton, who had never been on Grande Mignon before, sat blissfully ignorant of this circumstance.
Later, however, he remembered that his accommodating guide had chuckled inexplicably during most of the trip.
Twenty minutes’ ride in the chill night air brought them to a long, low pier that extended out into the black water. Above on the hillside the windows of the big fishing settlement on Long Island gleamed comfortable and yellow.
Thomas ran his dory close to the landing-stage and then reversed the engine so that at the time most convenient for Templeton to step off the boat had lost all motion. The lawyer landed, but Jimmie did not shut off his engine. Instead he turned it on full speed and backed away from the dock.
“Hey, you, where are you going?” called Templeton, vaguely alarmed for the first time.
“Back to the village,” answered Thomas, sending his motor into the forward speed. “I got something very important to do there.”
“But in which house is Schofield?” cried the other. “You said you would show me.”
There was no reply, and it is possible that, due to the noise of the engine, Thomas had not heard the protest at all.
Nat Burns arrived at Shannon’s boarding-house slightly in advance of the time named, and read Templeton’s note saying that he had gone to Castalia to nab Code while he had the chance.
“Who did Templeton go with?” he asked fearfully of the landlady.
“Mr. Thomas,” replied that worthy.
“My God!” rapped out Burns in such a tone of disgust and defeat that she shrank from him with uplifted hands. But he did not notice her. Instead he rushed out of the house and along the road toward Freekirk Head.
The boarding-house was a full half-mile from the wharfs of the village, and after a hundred yards Burns slowed down into a rapid walk.
“The fool took the bait like a dogfish,” he snarled. “Lord knows where he is by this time. I’ll bet Schofield is at the bottom of this.”
He had not as yet found out where Code was, and his first step when he reached the village was to go to the Schofield cottage and verify Templeton’s note.
Josie, the orphan girl, was there alone, and was on the point of tears with having been left alone so long with night coming on.
When questioned the girl admitted readily enough that Mrs. Schofield had taken a bundle of Code’s clothing and gone to Castalia in the afternoon, she having overheard the conversation that took place between her mistress and Pete Ellinwood.
When he had gained this information Burns hurried from the house and toward the spot on the beach between the wharfs where his dory lay.
He had not the remotest idea what had become of Templeton, but he was reasonably sure that if Thomas had taken him to Castalia, Schofield was no longer there.
What Thomas had really done did not occur to him, and his one idea was to get to the neighboring village as soon as possible and ascertain just what had taken place.
His dory was beached alongside the pier where the Charming Lass had lain for the past week. Now, as he approached it, he suddenly stopped, rooted in his tracks.
The Charming Lass was gone.
CHAPTER IX
ON THE COURSE
“All dories aboard? All hands set tops’ls! Jimmie Thomas, ease your mainsheet! Now, boys, altogether! Yo! Sway ’em flat! Yo! Once more! Yo! Fine! Stand by to set balloon jib!”
It was broad daylight, and the early sun lighted the newly painted, slanting deck of the Charming Lass as she snored through the gentle sea. On every side the dark gray expanse stretched unbroken to the horizon, except on the starboard bow. There a long, gray flatness separated itself from the horizon–the coast of southern Nova Scotia.
There was a favorable following wind, and the clean, new schooner seemed to express her joy at being again in her element by leaping across the choppy waves like a live thing.
While the crew of ten leaped to the orders, Code Schofield stood calmly at the wheel, easing her on her course, so as to give them the least trouble. Under the vociferous bellow of Pete Ellinwood, the crew were working miracles in swiftness and organization.
The sun had been up two hours, and now, as Schofield glanced back at the wake that foamed and bubbled behind them, his eyes fell upon the white sails of a vessel far astern. Even at the distance, it was plain that she was of schooner rig, and probably a fisherman.
“Wonder who she is?” asked Code, pointing her out to Ellinwood.
“Don’t know. Thought perhaps you’d seen her before, skipper. I’ve had my eye on her for an hour. Fisherman, likely; you’ll see ’em in all directions every day afore we’re through.”
The explanation was simple and obvious, and it satisfied Schofield. He promptly forgot her, as did every one else aboard the Lass. And reason enough. The cook, sticking his head out of the galley, bawled:
“Mug-up! First ta-a-able!” and the first table made a rush below.
When the five men sat down it was the first time they had been able to relax since the evening before, when, without lights, and under headsails only, the Charming Lass had stolen out between the reefs of Freekirk Head to sea.
“Wal, boys, I cal’late we’re safe!” ejaculated Ellinwood with great satisfaction. “The Lass is doin’ her ten knot steady, an’ I guess we’ll have left Cape Sable astern afore the sleepy heads at home find out what’s become of us.”
“You saved the day, Pete. If it hadn’t been for you I would never have got beyond St. John’s.” It was Code who spoke.
“And you pretty near spoiled what I did do,” rumbled Pete.
“How’s that?” interrupted Thomas interestedly. “I don’t know everything that happened to you fellers. I was busy at the time givin’ a friend of ours a joy-ride. Tell me about it!”
“It wasn’t me that nearly broke up the show, Pete,” protested Code. “It was mother. Of course, when Jimmie was taking her over to Castalia in his dory he told her what was in the wind. They found me at the Pembroke place, and we all went into Pembroke’s ice-house, where I was to stay until after dark. Then ma started in to find out everything.
“She allowed it wasn’t honorable for me to run away when the officer or lawyer was after me. She said it proved that I was guilty, and thought I ought to stay and be served with his paper. If I wasn’t guilty of anything, it could be proven easily enough, she said. Poor, honest mother! She forgot that the whole matter would take weeks, if not months, and that all that time I would be idle and discontented, and spending most of my time before boards of inquiry.
“I suppose it will look queer to a lot of people at the Head because I’ve gone. They’ll say right off: ‘Just as we thought! All this talk that has been going around is true,’ and put me down for a criminal that ought to go to jail. That’s what mother said, and the worst part of leaving her now is that she will have to stay and face the talk–and the looks that are worse than talk.
“But, Jimmie, I couldn’t do it. Grande Mignon is in too bad a hole. She needs every man who owns a schooner or a sloop or a dory to go out and catch fish and bring ’em home. The old island’s got her back against the wall, and I felt that when all the trouble and danger were over for her I would go to St. John’s, and let those people try and prove their case.
“They can’t prove anything! But that doesn’t say they won’t get a judgment. I’m poor and unknown, and ignorant of law. The company is a big corporation, with lawyers and plenty of money. If somebody there is after me I haven’t a chance, and they will gouge me for all they can get. You, Jimmie, and Pete know that this is so, and it was for all these reasons that I wouldn’t stand my ground and let that feller serve me.
“Ma is dependent on me, and when I have sold fifteen hundred quintals of fish she will have enough to carry her along until that trouble is over. So I’m going out after the fifteen hundred quintals. Now, that’s my story. We’ve heard Jimmie’s; but how did you manage everything so well, Pete?”
Ellinwood was flattered and coughed violently over the last of his victuals.
“Hey!” yelled some hungry member of the second half. “If you fellers eat any more you’ll sink the ship. Get up out o’ there an’ give yer betters a chance!” Ellinwood rolled a forbidding eye toward the companionway.
“Some clam-splitter on deck don’t seem to know that in this here packet the youth an’ beauty is allus considered fust,” he rumbled ominously. No reply being forthcoming, he turned to Code.
“When ol’ Bige Tanner come to me shakin’ like a leaf an’ said they was a feller on the steamer that would attach yer schooner an’ all that ye had, because of some business about the sinkin’ of the ol’ May, I says to myself, sez I:
“‘Pete,’ I sez, ‘we don’t allow nothin’ like that to spoil our cruise an’ keep the skipper ashore.’ Now, Mignon isn’t very big, an’ I knew he would git you in a day or two if you didn’t go back into the forest and hide. But I cal’lated you wouldn’t want to do that, an’ so I figgered the only way to beat that lawyer was to fool him before he got fair started on his search.
“I knowed you was in Castalia, an’ so I thought your mother better get you some clothes an’ bring ’em there. I found out that Nat Burns had taken the feller to Mis’ Shannon’s boardin’-house, an’, knowin’ that Jimmie was livin’ there, I got an idee. Jimmie’s told about that already. The feller bit, an’ that was the end of him.