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Updated: June 18, 2025
"I give you credit, Burns, for more brains than I ever supposed you had. What's become of Pete Ellinwood and the Lass?" "Pete is back on the schooner and she's gone out to fish. You needn't worry about them. At the proper time they'll be told you are safe and unhurt." Code said nothing for a while. With hands rammed into his pockets he stood watching the white and blue sea whirl by.
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?
"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.
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.
"Better take in them tops'ls, hadn't ye, skipper?" "Take in nothing!" snapped Code across the cabin table. "Any canvas that comes off this vessel between here and Freekirk Head blows off, unless we have passed all those schooners ahead of us. Haven't raised any of 'em, have you?" "Not yet, skipper; but we ought to by night," said Ellinwood as though he felt he was personally to blame.
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."
What was his surprise to see his mother in her one silk dress. "I'm going up to Mallaby House," he said in answer to her inquiring look. "But you! What's all this gaiety, mother?" "I am going to hear an account of how you behaved yourself on the voyage, Code," she said, attempting severity. "By an eye-witness?" Visions of Ellinwood, painfully arrayed, danced in his head. "Yes." "Um-m.
The stranger, which at eight o'clock had been five miles astern, was now, at noon, less than a mile away. Code instinctively shot a quick glance at the compass. The schooner was running dead east. "What's this, Ellinwood?" demanded the skipper sharply. "You're away off your course." "Yes, sir, and on purpose," replied the mate.
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.
Schofield and Ellinwood looked at each other blankly. "Are you goin' to run fer it, skipper?" asked the mate. "I'll have the balloon jib and stays'l set in five minutes, if you say so." Code thought for a minute. "It's no use," he said. "They'd catch us, anyway. Let 'em come up and we'll find out what they want. Take in your tops'ls. There's no use wasting time on the wrong course."
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