Francis William Sullivan

“ Code Schofield went aft to his cabin companionway, and prepared to go below and open his log. Kent took the wheel, and Ellinwood lurched about with a critical eye upon the lashings, sheets, and general appearance of the deck.
Schofield, remembering the schooner that had attracted his eye before, looked astern for her. She had gained rapidly upon them in the half-hour he had been below. Now he could see her graceful black hull, the shadows in the great sails, and the tiny men here and there upon her deck.
“What a sailer!” he cried in involuntary admiration. “She must be an American!” ”

“ No longer of early mornings did the resounding pop! pop! of motor-dories ring back from the rocks and headland as the trawlers and hand-liners put to sea. No longer did the groups of weary fishermen gather on the store steps for an evening pipe and chat or the young bloods chuck horseshoes at the foot of the chapel hill.
It was a village of women. True, Squire Hardy, being too old to fish, had remained at home, and Bill Boughton, who was completing details for the immediate and profitable sale of the season’s catch, was behind the counter of his general store. ”

“ Then he listened, for Nat was speaking.
“If you give your word of honor not to try and escape you can have the run of the decks and go anywhere you like on the schooner. If not, you will be locked up and go home a prisoner.”
It was the last straw, the final piece of humiliation. Code stiffened as a soldier might to rebuke. A deadly, dull anger surged within him and took possession of his whole being––such an anger as can only come to one who, amiable and upright by nature, is driven to inevitable revolt. ”

“ Young Captain Code Schofield sprang out of the deep, luxurious chair and began to pace up and down before the fire. He did not cast as much as a glance at the woman near him. His mind was elsewhere. He had heard strange things in this talk with her.
“Well, captain, you know how it is on an island like this. The tiny thing of everyday life becomes a subject for a day’s discussion. That affair of six months ago was like dropping a tombstone in a mud-puddle––everything is profoundly stirred, but no one gets spattered except the one who dropped it. ”

“ Neither he nor the May ever saw dry land again. Only Code of the whole ship’s company struggled ashore on the Wolves, bruised and half dead from exposure.
The end of the old log before him was full of poignant tragedy to Code, the tragedy of his own life, for it was the unwritten pages from then on that should have told the story of a fiendishly planned revenge upon him who was totally innocent of any wrong-doing. The easy, weak, indulgence of the father had grown a crop of vicious and cruel deeds in the son. ”

“ It was a brilliant day, with a glorious blue sky overhead and a bracing breeze out of the east. Just beyond Long Island a low stratum of miasmic gray was the only shred of the usual fog to be seen on the whole horizon. In the little roadstead the vessels, black-hulled or white, rode eagerly and gracefully at their moorings, the bright sun bringing out the red, yellow, green, blue, and brown of the dories nested amidships.
At seven o’clock the steamer Grande Mignon blew a great blast of her whistle, cast off her lines, and cleared for St. Andrew’s and St. Stephens. ”

“ It is a strange city, lost in the midst of busy up-to-date 163 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. ”

“ He sprang to the port and looked out.
The sun smote him full in the face. He strained his eyes against the horizon that was unusually clear for this foggy sea, and would have sworn that along its edge was a dark line of land. The conclusion was inevitable.
The Albatross was flying directly south as fast as her whole spread of canvas could take her.
Schofield could not explain this phenomenon to himself, nor did he try. ”

“ John’s by the steamer Grande Mignon were stowed in lazarets and below. Rigging was overhauled, canvas patched or renewed, and bright, tawny ropes substituted for the old ones in sheet and tackle.
Every low tide was a signal for great activity among the vessels made fast alongside the wharfs, for the rise of the water was nearly twenty feet, and when it receded the ships stood upright on their keels and exposed their bottoms to scraper, calking mallet, and paint-brush.
In every house where father or son was expecting soon to sail the women were busy with clothing and general outfit. ”

“ Now it is one thing to sail like the Flying Dutchman 272 with the sun up and one’s eyes to use, but it is another to career through the night without taking in a stitch of canvas, trusting to luck and the Providence that watches over fishermen that the compass is good and that no blundering coasters will get in the way.
When dawn broke wild and dirty, the Charming Lass was reeling through the water less than a quarter of a mile astern of the Rosan and the Herring Bone. Through the murk Code could see the Nettie B. three miles ahead. ”

“ Among the Grande Mignon boats there was intense rivalry. In the holds the layers of salted fish rose steadily under the phenomenal fishing. The salt-barrels were emptied and crowded out by the cod, hake, and pollock. It was these boats that Ellinwood watched with the eye of a hawk, for back in Freekirk Head he knew that Bill Boughton stood ready to pay a bonus for the first cargo to reach port. Now was the time when the advance orders from the West Indies were coming up, and, because of the failure of the season on the island itself, these orders stood unfilled. ”

“ Did you ever want something so hard that it hurt, and couldn’t get it?”
217
“Yes, I wanted my father back after he died,” said Code simply.
“And I wanted Jim after he died,” added Elsa. “Those things are bad enough; but one gets used to them. What I mean especially is something we see about us all the time and have no chance of getting. Did you ever want something like that, so that it nearly killed you, and couldn’t get it?”
Code was silent. The one rankling hurt of his whole life, after seemingly being healed, broke out afresh––the engagement of Nat Burns and Nellie Tanner. ”

“ Pete had gone away for an hour, and Ma Schofield had taken the dishes back home, when the detective came in, saying that a little girl who called herself Josie had come with a message.
Code asked to see her, and the great-eyed, dark little thing wept bitterly over him, for to her fourteen years he represented all the heroes of romance. Even as she passed him the message she knew that she could never love again and that she would shortly die of a broken heart. ”

“ Jump for it!”
The head of the Lass went down with a sickening swoop and the sound of thunder. A great, gray-and-white wall boiled and raced over her bows. Ellinwood leaped for the weather-rigging and the other two clutched the wheel as they stood waist-deep in the surge that roared over the taffrail and to leeward.
“Pass the life-lines, Pete,” ordered Code, and all hands passed stout ropes from rigging to house to rail, forward and astern, so that there might be something to leap for when the Lass was boarded by a Niagara. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Bijonah Tanner remained silent for a moment, plainly embarrassed by the duty before him. Between most men who follow the sea and their daughters there is much less intimacy than with those who are in other walks of life. Long absences and the feeling that a mother is responsible for her girls are reasons for this; while in the case of boys, who begin to putter round the parental schooner from their earliest youth, a much closer feeling exists. ”

“ They seemed to move through an endless gray world.
For an hour they sailed, the only sounds being the flap of the canvas, the creaking of the tiller ropes, and the drip of the fog. Tanner was about to give the word to let go the anchor when, without warning, they suddenly burst clear of the fog and came out into the vast gray welter of the open sea. ”

“ All hands knew it was to be every man for himself. We had no life preservers, and our one big dory had been smashed when the wreckage came down.”
Code’s face was working with suppressed emotion, and Elsa reached out her hand and touched his.
“Don’t tell me any more,” she said; “I know the rest. Let’s talk about the present.”
“Thanks, Elsa,” he said, gratefully.
“How long have you thought that the schooner was a second ‘one hoss shay’?”
“Until this talk with you. I would never have thought anything else. It’s the logical thing to think, isn’t it? ”

“ In reality, then, the race for fish was keenest between the Charming Lass, the Rosan, and the Herring Bone, with three other schooners very close on their heels.
At the end of the nine days there was little space beneath the deck planks of the Charming Lass, but every night Pete would come up, slapping his hands free of salt, and say, “Wal, boys, I guess we can crowd another day’s work into her,” and the exhausted men would gather themselves for another great effort as they rolled forward into their bunks. ”

“ His victim escaping him with the schooner and the means of livelihood, Burns had employed a traitor in the crew to poison the bait and force him to come ashore to replenish his tubs. Once ashore, the shanghaiing was not difficult.
Code had no doubt whatever that the whole plan, commencing with the disappearance of the man in the motor-dory and ending with his abduction from St. Pierre, was part and parcel of the same scheme. In this, his crowning achievement of skill and cunning, Burns had showed himself an admirable plotter, playing upon human nature as he did to effect his ends. ”

“ An hour later, when the cook had sent out his call for the first half, Code made Ellinwood stay on deck and bring the schooner to an anchorage after sounding.
The sounding lead is a long slug, something like a 99 window-weight, at the bottom of which is a saucer-shaped hollow. The leadsman, a young fellow from Freekirk Head, took his place on the schooner’s rail outside the forerigging. The lead was attached to a line and, as the schooner forged slowly ahead, close-hauled, the youth swung the lead in ever-widening semicircles. ”

“ But the deck of the schooner was a mass of the bait, and the tubs of salt clams brought from Freekirk Head could be saved until later.
Rockwell, who had been looking out forward, suddenly called Code’s attention to a flock of sea-pigeons floating on the water a mile ahead. As the skipper looked he saw the fowl busily diving and “upending,” and he knew they had struck the edge of the Banks; for water-fowl will always dive in shoal water, and a skipper sailing to the Banks from a distance always looks for this sign. ”

“ It was in this unfortunate moment that Nellie seized on the general topic of the day.
“Guess you’ll have to get off and push the Nettie B. before you can beat those Gloucestermen, Nat,” she said, teasing him.
“Say, I’ve heard about all I want to hear about 119 that!” he snarled, suddenly losing control of himself as they walked back to the little cabin. The girl looked at him in hurt amazement. Never in all her life had a man spoken to her in such a tone. It was inconceivable that the man she was going to marry could address her so, if he even pretended to love her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He laughed harshly.
“I can see Nat Burns’s hand in all this,” he cried. “Why didn’t I think of it before? He will dog me till I die because his father lost his life aboard my schooner. Oh, I had no idea it was as bad as this!”
He sank down into the chair again and stared gloomily into the fire.
“I’m glad I came to-night,” he said at last. “I didn’t know all these things. How long has this talk been going round?”
“Not long, Code.” Her voice was all sympathy. “It is simply the result of brooding among our people who have so little in their lives. I’m sorry. What will you do? ”

“ A great wave of molten fire shot out in the 17 breeze, and the shingles on Bill Boughton’s store, parched with the drought of a month, burst into quick flame.
The squire ran back to the water-trough.
“Dip!” he yelled. Big Pete Ellinwood, with the piles of buckets beside him, seized one and twitched it full.
“Pass!” screamed the squire as it came up dripping. Ellinwood’s great arm swung forward to meet the arm of the man a yard away. The bucket changed hands and went forward without losing a drop. ”

“ When Code Schofield came to himself his first sensation was one of oppression, such as is felt after sleeping in an unventilated room. It seemed difficult for him to breathe, but his body was quite free and uninjured, as he found by moving himself carefully in all directions before he even opened his eyes.
Presently the air became familiar. It was a perfect mixture of flavors; oilskins, stale tobacco-smoke, brine, burned grease, tar, and, as a background, fish. ”

“ As well as could be judged, the Nettie B., Rosan, and Herring Bone were nearly on even terms twenty miles ahead, all with every stitch set and flying like leaves before a wind.
“Bend on balloon jib!” snapped Schofield when he had considered the task before him. Pete ran joyfully to execute the order, but some of the men hesitated.
“Up with her!” roared Pete, and up she went, a great concave hollow of white like the half of a pear. The Lass’s head went down, and now, instead of attempting to go over the waves, she went through them without argument. ”