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CHAPTER XVII
TRAWLERS

Schofield stood as one stupefied, staring blankly at the fateful words.

Murder in the first degree!

Had it not been for his thorough knowledge of Nat Burns’s character he would have laughed at the absurdity of the thing and thrown the message over the side.

But now he remained like one fast in the clutch of some horrible nightmare, unable to reason, unable to think coherently, unable to do anything but attempt to sound the depths of a hatred such as this.

“For Heaven’s sake, what is it, skipper?” asked Ellinwood.

Code passed the message to his mate without a word. His men might as well know the worst at once. Ellinwood read slowly.

“Rot!” he snarled in his great rumbling voice. “Murder? How does he get murder out of it?”

“If I sank the old May Schofield for her insurance money, which is what every one believes, then I deliberately caused the death of the men with me, didn’t I? Pete, this is a pretty-serious thing. I didn’t care when they set the insurance company on me, but this is different. If it goes beyond this stage I will carry the disgrace of jail and a trial all my life. That devil has nearly finished me!”

Code’s voice broke, and the tears of helpless rage smarted in his eyes.

“Steady on, now!” counseled Pete, looking with pity at the young skipper he worshiped. “He’s done fer you true this time, but the end of things is a tarnal long ways off yet, an’ don’t you go losin’ yer spunk!”

“But what have I ever done to him that he should start this against me?” cried Schofield.

Pete could not answer.

“What do they do when a man is accused of murder?” asked Code.

“Why, arrest him, I guess.”

Pete scratched his chin reminiscently. “There was that Bulwer case.” He recounted it in detail. “Yes,” he went on, “they can’t do nothin’ until the man accused is arrested.

“After that he gets a preliminary hearin’, and, if things seem plain enough, then the grand jury indicts him. After that he’s tried by a reg’lar jury. So the fust thing they’ve got to do is arrest you.”

“Darn it, they sha’n’t–I’ll sail to Africa first!” snarled Code, his eyes blazing. He strode up and down the deck.

“You say the word, skipper,” rumbled Pete loyally, “an’ we crack on every stitch fer the north pole!”

Code smiled.

“Curse me if I don’t like to see a man smile when he’s in trouble,” announced Pete roundly. “Skipper, you’ll do. You’re young, an’ these things come hard, but I cal’late we’ll drop all this talk about sailin’ away to furrin parts.

“Now, there’s jest two courses left fer you to sail. Either we go on fishin’ an’ dodge the gunboat that brings the officer after you, or we go on fishin’ an’ let him get you when he comes. I’ll stand by you either way. You’ve got yer mother to support, God bless her! An’ you’ve got a right to fill yer hold with fish so’s she can live when they’re sold. That’s one way of lookin’ at it; the other’s plain sailin’!”

“No, Pete; this is too serious. I guess the mother’ll have to suffer this time, too. If they send a man after me I’ll be here and I’ll go back and take my medicine. I’ll make you skipper, and you can select your mate. You’ll get a skipper’s share, and you can pay mother the regular amount for hiring the Lass–”

“She’ll get skipper’s share if I have to lick every hand aboard!” growled Ellinwood. “An’ you can rest easy on that.”

“That’s fine,” said Code gently; “and I don’t know what I’d do without you, Pete.”

“You ain’t supposed to do without me. What in thunder do you suppose I shipped with you fer if it wasn’t to look after you, hey?”

The men had finished dressing down and were cleaning up the decks. Several of them, noticing that something momentous was being discussed, were edging nearer. Pete observed this.

“Skipper,” he said, “we’ve got four or five shots of trawl-line to pick. Suppose you and I go out an’ do the job? Then we can talk in peace. Feel able?”

“Never better in my life. Get my dory over.”

“That blue one? Never again! That’s bad luck fer you. Take mine.”

“All right. Anything you say.”

Several hands made the dory ready. Into it they put three or four tubs or half casks in which was coiled hundreds of fathoms of stout line furnished with a strong hook every two or three feet. Each hook was baited with a fat salt clam, for the early catch of squid had been exhausted by the dory fishing. There was also a fresh tub of bait, buoys, and a lantern.

A youth aboard clambered up to the cross-trees, gave them the direction of the trawl buoy-light, and they started. It was a clear, starlit night with only a gentle sea running and no wind to speak of. There was not a hint of fog.

The Charming Lass lay now in the Atlantic approximately along the forty-sixth parallel, near its intersection with the fifty-fifth of meridian; or eighty to a hundred miles southwest of Cape Race, Newfoundland, and almost an equal distance southeast of the Miquelon Islands, France’s sole remaining territorial possession in the New World.

Code and Ellinwood easily found their trawl buoy by the glimmer of the light across the water. They immediately began to plant the trawl-lines in the tubs aboard the dory. The big buoy for the end of the line they first anchored to the bottom with dory roding.

Then, as Ellinwood rowed slowly, Code paid the baited trawl-line out of the tubs. As there are hooks every few feet, so are there big wooden buoys, so that the whole length of the line–sometimes twenty-five hundred feet–is floated near the surface.

When the last had been paid out, a second anchor and large buoy was fixed, and their trawl was “set.” Next they turned their attention to picking the trawl already in the water.

As the line came over the starboard gunnel Code picked the fish off the hooks, passing the hooks to Pete, who baited them and threw them over the port gunnel. Thus they would work their way along the whole of the line.

Many of the hooks that came to Code’s hands still had the bait with which they were set.

“Must be in the bait,” he told Ellinwood. “The fish wouldn’t touch it. This is no catch for five shots of trawl.”

But Pete could not cast any light on the subject.

It was certainly true that the catch from the trawl-line was small enough to be remarkable, but the men were helpless to explain the reason.

For two hours they worked along the great line.

“There’s a bare chance that the message from the unknown schooner might be a fake, although I can’t imagine why,” said Code as they were returning. “But if it is not, and the Canadian gunboat comes after me, she’ll find me here, willing to go back to St. Andrew’s and answer all charges. No escape and no dodging this time! And let me tell you something, Pete. If nothing comes out of this except ugly rumor that I have to suffer for, I’m going to quit minding my own business; and I’ll dig up something that will drive Nat Burns out of Freekirk Head forever.

“A man of his character and nature has certainly got something he doesn’t want known, and I shall bring it to light and make it so public that he’ll wish he had never heard the name Schofield. By Heaven, I’ve reached the end of my patience!”

If there was anything Pete Ellinwood loved it was a fight, and at this declaration of war he roared encouragement.

“You’ll do, skipper–you’ll do! Get after him! Climb his frame! Put him out of business. An’ let me help you. That’s all I want.”

“Everything in good time, Pete,” grinned Code. “First we’ve got to find out how much of this is in the wind and how much is not.”

Arrived at the schooner, they pitched their fish into the pen for the first watch to dress and rolled aft for the night. Code took off his coat and drew forth the packet that Elsa had given him, looked at it for a moment, and threw it upon the table.

“Why in time did she send me that?” he asked himself, his voice very near disgust. “It must have looked mighty strange to Nell for me to be getting money from Elsa Mallaby.”

He stopped short in the midst of pulling off one boot. The idea had never struck him forcibly before. Now it seemed evident that Nellie’s reserve might have been due to the letter.

“What a fool I was not to tell her all about it!” he cried. With one boot off he reached across to the packet under the swinging lamp and drew the letter out of it and read:

“Dear Partner:
“Here is something that Captain Bijonah will hand to you when he catches the Lass. There are supposed to be one hundred and fifty dollars in this packet (I never was much of a counter, as you know). Now, dear friend, this isn’t all for you unless you need it. It is simply a small reserve fund for the men of the fleet if they should need anything–a new gaff, for instance, or a jib, or grub.
“It isn’t much, but you never can tell when it might come in handy. It was your good scheme that sent the men off fishing, and you left the way open for me to do my little part here at the Head. Now I want to do just this much more for the sailors of the fleet, and I am asking you to be my treasurer. When you hear of a needy case just give him what you think he needs and say it is a loan from me if he won’t take a gift.
“If this is a trouble to you I am sorry, but we are all working for the good name and good times of Grande Mignon, and I hope you won’t mind. Good fishing to the Charming Lass, high line and topping full! May you wet your salt early and come home again to those who are longing to see you.
“This is all done on the spur of the moment, so I have no time to ask your mother to enclose a line. But I know she sends her love. It has been a little hard for her here since you left, bless her heart; but she has been as brave as a soldier and helped me very much. We see a great deal of each other and you can rest assured I shall look after her.
“Always your old friend,
“ELSA.”

As Code read the last paragraph his eyes softened. It was white of Elsa to look after his mother, particularly now when there would be much for her to face regarding himself. And it was white of her to send the money for the sailors of the fleet. Even she did not know, as Code did, how nearly destitute some of the dorymen were. He would be glad to do what little work there might be in disbursing the sum.

“Sorry Nellie didn’t seem interested when I began to talk about Elsa,” he said to himself. “I suppose I should have told her, anyway, so there wouldn’t be any misunderstanding. Well, I’ll do it next time.” He turned the lamp low and rolled into his bunk.

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: