Cormorant Crag Part 86

"Understands that, my lads," said the lieutenant; "but you must jump down quickly--I am losing a deal of time."

"Never mind, sir," said Vince; "I've been sailing all about here ever since I was quite a little fellow, and I know the rocks too. The schooner must tack round in half an hour's time, and then run east."

"Yes, I know that."

"Well, sir, you can run from here right across, and save miles."

The officer looked at him keenly.

"The pa.s.sage is called the Narrows, and it's all deep water. You see the big gull rock away yonder--the one with the white top?"

"Well!"

"Make straight for that, and go within half a cable's length. Then tack, keep the south point right over the windmill for your bearings, and sail due east too. Then you can cut the smuggler off."

"Hah! yes; it's down on the chart, but I did not dare to try it. Thank you, my lad; that is grand. Ah! here's the boat."

The boys shrank back, so that old Daygo should not see them, while the lieutenant stepped up to the side and bullied the old man, who protested humbly that he did not understand the signal.

"Well, quick! Here are two pa.s.sengers to take ash.o.r.e. Now, my lads-- sharp!"

Vince and Mike shook hands with the officer, while a sailor at the gangway held on to the painter of Daygo's boat, which was gliding pretty fast through the water, the course of the cutter not having been quite stopped; then the lads jumped lightly in, the painter was thrown after them, there was a slight touch of the helm, and the cutter heeled over and dashed away, leaving Vince and Mike looking the old man full in the face, while he stared back with his jaw dropped down almost to his chest.

"Then you arn't dead, young gen'lemen?"

"No, we're not dead," said Vince sharply. "Now then, hoist that sail and run us home."

The boys sat there watching the cutter, the lugger and the schooner all sailing rapidly away. Then suddenly it occurred to both the lads that the old man was very slow over the business of hoisting that sail; that he was then the greatest enemy they had, and that it would be very awkward for them if he were to suddenly take it into his head to do them some mischief.

"He's a big, strong man," thought Vince; "he knows that we can ruin him if we like to speak, and--I wonder what Ladle is thinking about?"

"Ladle" was thinking the same.

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE.

DAYGO MEETS HIS MATCH.

It seemed to take a long time to hoist that sail, but at last it was well up, the yard creaking against the mast; and standing on their dignity now, and keeping the old man at a distance, the boys made no offer to take the sheet or steer, but let Daygo pa.s.s them as they sat amids.h.i.+ps, one on each side, and he seated himself, hauled in the sheet, and thrust an oar over the stern to steer.

There was a nice breeze now, they were only about a mile from the sh.o.r.e, and as the boat danced merrily through the little waves a feeling of joy and exultation, to which the boys had long been strangers, filled their b.r.e.a.s.t.s. They took long, hungry looks at the sh.o.r.e, and then at the cutter racing along towards the great gull rock, at the schooner careening over as she ran on under all the canvas she could bear; and then back at the lugger, which by comparison seemed to limp along, with a scrub of a spar hoisted as a jury mast, far astern, in place of the fallen mizen, so as to steady her steering.

Then they looked at each other again, those two, as they sat face to face, neither speaking, and carefully avoiding even a glance at Daygo, feeling as they did the awkwardness of their position, and averse to meeting the old scoundrel's eye.

Not that they would have met it, for Daygo was as full of discomfort as they, and with his eyes screwed up face one maze of wrinkles, he stared through between them as if looking at the prow, but really at the big patch of canvas in his sail.

For, as Daygo put it to himself, he was on the awkwardest bit of lee sh.o.r.e that he had ever sailed by in his life.

He had, as was surmised by the cook, caught sight of the Revenue cutter sailing by the north side of the Crag, and hurried down to his boat to warn Jacques or his companion; but, upon finding himself too late, he was making for home again, thinking that, as Jacques was taken and his lugger a prize to the cutter--which looked determined to follow up the schooner, probably to take her too--there would be no owner for the contraband goods still left in the cavern, unless that owner proved to be himself. There were two others, he mused--two who knew of the place and its treasure; but Captain Jacques was, according to the old fisherman's theory, not the kind of man to stick at trifles when such great interests were at stake; and he felt quite satisfied that the two boys would never be seen at Cormorant Crag again. Some accident would happen to them--what accident was no business of his, he argued. They had got themselves into a terrible mess through their poking and prying about, and they must put up with the consequences. They might have fallen off the cliff when getting sea-birds' eggs, or they might have been carried away by one of the currents when bathing, or they might have been capsized and drowned while they stole his boat--he called it "stole"--in any one of which cases, he said to himself, they'd never have come back to the Crag again, and it wouldn't have been any business of his, so he wasn't going to worry his brains. Old Jarks had grabbed 'em, and when he grabbed anything he didn't let it go again.

Joe Daygo was a slow thinker, and all this took him a long time to hammer out; and he had just settled it comfortably, on his way home, when he caught sight of the pilot flag flying, and paid no heed.

"Don't ketch me showing 'em the way through the Narrers to ketch the _Shark_!" he growled; and he kept on his way till the imperative mood present tense was tried, and then he made for the side of the cutter, to receive what was to him a regular knock-down blow, or, as he put it, a wind taking him on a very dangerous lee sh.o.r.e.

So the old fisherman did not look at his pa.s.sengers, but began thinking hard again. He couldn't take those two home, he said to himself, for, if he did, at their first words he'd be seized by some one or every one, for they all hated him for being so well off, and monopolising so much of the lobster catching, especially Jemmy Carnach. Then Sir Francis Ladelle and the Doctor would come; he'd be locked up, sent by the smack over to England, and be tried, and all his savings perhaps be seized.

Just, too, when he had a chance of doubling them by taking the contents of the cave.

He had arrived at this point with great difficulty when the strange silence on board the boat, which had so far only been broken by the lapping of the water and the creaking of the yard, was broken by Vince, who cried excitedly, as he stood up in the boat:

"Look, look, Mike! Nearly everybody's yonder on the cliff. They've heard the firing and the explosion, and they're watching the cutter chase the schooner."

Mike rose too, and with beating hearts the two boys stood trying to make out who was on the look-out; but the distance was too great to distinguish faces. Still they stood, steadying each other by clapping hands on shoulders, quite unconscious of the fact that the old man was now gazing at them with a very peculiar expression of countenance, that foreboded anything but good.

All at once, they both lurched and nearly fell, for Daygo's mind was made up, and he thrust his oar deep down, changing the boat's course suddenly, and making the sail flap.

"Here, what are you doing?" cried Vince, forced by this to speak to the old man at last.

"Think I want to run my boat into that curran' an' get on the rocks?

Sit down, will you, and keep outer the way of the sheet."

For answer the boys went forward, quite out of his way, and the boat rushed on again for some ten minutes before they spoke again, though they had been looking about with gathering uneasiness, for they were growing suspicious, but ashamed to speak because the idea seemed to be absurd.

At last Vince said--

"He's making a precious long tack, Mike, and I don't know of any big current here."

Mike was silent, and they saw now that without doubt they were sailing right away from the island, and were in the full race of the tide.

Still they felt that the old man must know best how to make for his tiny port, and they sat in silence for fully twenty minutes, waiting for him to make another tack and run back.

But soon the suspicions both felt had grown into a certainty, and Mike said in a whisper, as calmly as he could,--

"Cinder, he has got the conger bat out of the locker. What does he mean?"

"He means that he won't take us ash.o.r.e," said Vince huskily: "he's going to sail right away with us for fear we should tell about him, and the conger bat's to frighten us and keep us quiet."

There was a strange look of agony in Mike Ladelle's eyes, as he gazed in his companion's, to read there a horror quite as deep. Then neither of them spoke, but sat there listening to the lapping of the water, which spread to right and left in two lines of foam as the little boat sped on.

It was Vince who broke the silence at last, after drawing a deep breath.

"Ladle, old chap," he said, in a low voice, "they're at home yonder, and it means perhaps never seeing them again. What shall we do?"

Mike tried to speak, but his voice was too husky to be heard for a few moments.

"I'll do what you do," he said at last.

"You'll stand by me, whatever comes?"