The Harbor of Doubt

CHAPTER XVIII

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:

“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.

CHAPTER XIX

ELLINWOOD TAKES A HAND

There were two things for Code to do. One was to sail north into Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, set seines, and catch the herring that were then schooling. The other was to run sixty miles or so northeast to St. Pierre, Miquelon, and buy bait.

Under ordinary circumstances he would not have hesitated. It would have been Placentia Bay without question. But his situation was now decidedly out of the ordinary. He was in a hurry to fill his hold with cod before the other men out of Freekirk Head; first, for the larger prices he would get; and secondly, because he yearned to come to grapples with Nat Burns.

To seine for herring would lose him upward of a week; to buy it would take less than three days, including the round trip to St. Pierre.

But the money?

Code knew that in the French island herring seldom went below three dollars a barrel, and that the smallest amount he ought to buy would be twenty-five barrels. Later on, if the fishing was good, he might send out a party to set the seines, but not now. He must buy. But the money!

Then he thought of the packet of money Elsa Mallaby had sent him. The cash was meant for any sailor who came to need it.

And the men with him were willing to fight to the last ditch and to take their lot ungrumblingly as fishermen early learn to do.

If he starved, they starved. So he decided he would not hesitate to use Elsa’s money when a dozen men and their families were dependent upon him and the success of the cruise.

Thus the matter was settled and the order roared down the decks:

“Set every stitch for St. Pierre; we’re going to bait up there. Lively, now!”

St. Pierre, Miquelon, is one of the quaintest towns in all of picturesque French Canada. It is on the island of the same name (there are three Miquelon islands), which is in itself a bold chunk of granite sticking up out of the ocean at a distance of some ten miles southwest of May Point, Newfoundland.

Rough and craggy, with few trees, sparse vegetation, and a very thin coating of soil, there is no agriculture, and the whole glory of the island is centered in the roaring city on its southeast side.

It is a strange city, lost in the midst of busy up-to-date Canada, with French roofs, narrow tilting streets, and ever the smell of fish. There is a good harbor, and there are wharfs where blackfaced men with blue stockings, caps, and gold earrings chatter the patois and smoke their pipes. In the busy time of year there are ten thousand men in the town and it is a scene of constant revelry and wildness.

The Charming Lass touched the port at the height of its season–early September–and, because of the shallowness of the harbor close in, anchored in the bay amid a crowd of old high-pooped schooners, filled with noisy, happy Frenchmen. There were other nationalities, too, in the cosmopolitan bay–Americans setting a new spar or Nova Scotians in on a good time.

The Charming Lass cast her anchor shortly before six o’clock, having made the run in five and a half hours with a good breeze behind. Code and Ellinwood immediately went over the side in the brown dory of the mate and pulled for the customhouse wharf. The rest of the crew were forbidden off the decks except to sleep under them, for it was intended, as soon as the bait was lightered aboard, to make sail to the Banks again.

The bait industry in St. Pierre is one more or less open to examination. It is the delight of certain French dealers to go inside the English three-mile limit, load their vessels with barrels of herring, and return to St. Pierre. Here they sell them at magnificent profit to Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Americans. And, as the British coat of arms is not stamped on herring at birth, no one can prove that they were not legally procured.

But let a Canadian revenue cutter catch a Frenchman (or American either, for that matter), dipping herring in any out-of-the-way inlet, and the owner not only pays a heavy fine, but he often loses his schooner and his men go to jail for trying to hoist sail and escape at the last minute.

Code had not reached shore before he had been accosted by fully half a dozen of these bait pirates. But he passed them, and tying his dory at the wharf, went on up the street to a legitimate firm.

Immediately the business was finished, Code and Pete Ellinwood started back to the wharf.

The main street was ablaze with lights. Cafés, saloons, music halls, catch-penny places–in fact, every device known to separate sailors from their wages was in operation. The sidewalks were crowded with men, jabbering madly in the different dialects of their home provinces (for many come here from France yearly).

“Queer lot, these frog-eaters,” said Pete, going into the street so as to avoid a thick, pushing crowd.

“Yes, they would come to a knifing over a count of fish and yet give their schooners to a friend in trouble. Too bad they ain’t better fishermen.”

“Yeah, ain’t it.”

Among Canadians and Americans the Frenchmen are held in contempt on account of their hooks, which are of soft metal and can be rebent and used again. The fish often get away with them, however, and these hidden hooks slit many a finger in dressing down.

The two comrades loitered along, watching the changing crowds, gay with their colored caps and scarfs. Some men were already in liquor, and all seemed to be headed in that general direction. Suddenly, as Code was about to urge Pete along, he gave an exclamation and stopped short.

“What’s the matter, skipper?”

“I wonder where he is now?” Code’s eyes were searching the crowd. “I saw him right over there.”

He pointed to a certain spot.

“Who? What? Are you crazy, Code?”

“’Arry Duncan, the traitor that ruined our bait. I’d have sworn I saw him. It came all of a sudden and went away again. But I guess it couldn’t have been anything but a close resemblance.” He laughed nervously. “Gave me the creeps for a minute, though.”

“Lor-rd!” shivered Pete, who had all the superstitions of the sea at his fingers’ ends. “Mebbe he’s chasin’ us around fer wrongly accusin’ him. They do that sometimes, you know. He’s probably dead an’ that’s his sperrit, ha’ntin’ us.”

“Oh, rot, Pete!” growled Code in his most forcible manner. “Come along now or you’ll be sidling into one of these doors and the Lass won’t get out of port for a week.”

“My soul an’ body! Look at that Frenchy. Biggest I ever saw, Code.”

They had returned to the sidewalk, and Pete forgot that he himself rose fully as high above the crowds as this stranger. In fact, nearly every one turned to take a look at the huge islander, who, in reality, stood six feet four, barefoot.

They were pushing down-street against the tide and making rather heavy going of it. Code maneuvered so as to pass well to leeward of the big man who, he could see plainly, was just tipsy. But somehow the eyes of the two giants met, and the Frenchman seemed to crush his way through the crowd in Ellinwood’s direction.

“Come on, Pete; get out of here before there’s any trouble,” commanded Code. He knew the mate’s weakness for fighting.

The big Frenchman, who wore tremendous earrings, a bright scarlet cap with a blue tuft, and a gay sash, lurched through the crowd and against Pete Ellinwood with a malice only too plain. But his effort was attended with failure. Not only did Pete stand like a rock, but he thrust the other violently back with his shoulder, so that he recoiled upon those behind him, earning their loud-voiced curses.

“Mille tonnerres!” bellowed the Frenchman. “You insult me, cochon Canadien, Canadian pig! The half of sidewalk is mine, eh? You push me off, eh? You fight, eh?”

Code urged Ellinwood along and interceded personally, knowing that the big man would not touch him.

But the Frenchman would not be appeased. He was just drunk enough to become obsessed with the ugly idea that Pete had laid a trap to insult him, and, regardless of Code, kept after the mate.

By this time, of course, a huge crowd had gathered and was following Pete’s retreat, yelling to both men to fight it out. Many of the mob knew a few English words, and their taunts reached Ellinwood’s ears.

He and Code had not retreated a block before the mate suddenly swung around on his tormentors.

“I won’t stand for that, Code. Did you hear what that big devil called me?” he demanded.

“What do you care what he called you? Get along to the ship. What chance have we got with these men?” Code grabbed Pete’s arm and kept him moving away. Beneath his hand he could feel the muscles as hard as iron.

But every foot the Canadians retreated brought the big Frenchman nearer, bawling with triumph. At an opportune moment, so close was the press, he slipped his foot between Ellinwood’s legs and gave him a push. Pete stumbled, almost fell, and recovered himself, raging.

“Get back you!” he bawled, sending half a dozen men spinning with sweeps of his great arms. “I’ll fight this Frenchy. Just let me at him!”

Code saw the rage in Pete’s eyes and recognized that he could do nothing more to avert the trouble. His part would have to be confined to seeing that his man got a fair deal. He and Pete were unarmed except for their huge clasp-knives–much better kept out of sight under the circumstances.

The crowd fell back, and the two giants stripped off their coats and shirts. The Frenchman danced up and down, beating his great fists together in a fine frenzy, but Pete, half-crouched, stepped forward on his toes, his hands hanging loose and ready at his sides.

“Allez, donc!” It was the starting word, and Jean leaped in. Pete met him with a crashing right to the ribs and dodged out of reach of the clutching hands that reached for his throat. They circled around a moment and again the Frenchman came, this time in one great leap.

On the instant Ellinwood jumped in to meet him. There was a swift flying of arms, a pounding of the great fists, and Pete suddenly shot back from the mêlée and landed on his back in the dirt. One of the Frenchman’s great swings had landed. But he was up in an instant and went after his opponent again.

Jean saw now that he had another man to deal with–unlike a Frenchman, an Anglo-Saxon cannot fight without sufficient provocation. Now all the battle was aroused in Ellinwood, for aside from the shame of his downfall, the crowd was yelling at the top of its voice. Jean began to run away, circling round and round the ring of spectators, Pete after him.