Tunis had been able to keep scarcely enough of his crew to handle the _Seamew_ in fair weather; and the barometer was falling, with every indication in sea and sky of the approach of bad weather. He feared the few hands he had would desert when they reached Boston.

Zebedee Pauling was a young host in himself--far and away a better seaman than Orion Latham, as well as a better fellow. But the schooner could not be sailed with good will.

Tunis' mind, however, remained fixed upon Sheila's troubles rather than upon his own; and as soon as the schooner docked, he went up into the town and wended his way directly to the great department store in which he had once interviewed the troublesome Ida May Bostwick.

The cargo was out, and the _Seamew_ had already been warped into another wharf where freight was awaiting her when the skipper returned to the water front that afternoon. The three men remaining of the forecastle crew were still at work, a.s.sisted by Zebedee and Horry Newbegin. They had not had a regular cook for two trips now.

But a new complication had arisen. Mason Chapin stood at the rail waiting his return, and a taxicab had been summoned. The mate carried a bag.

"A telegram from Doctor Norris. My wife's worse, Mr. Latham. I've got to go back just as fast as steam will get me there," was his greeting to the skipper of the _Seamew_.

This was according to the agreement Mason Chapin had made in the beginning. His wife was sorely ill, and surely Tunis would not stand between a man and his sick wife!

But it left a very serious situation upon the schooner when the mate drove away in the taxicab. Six men, forward and aft, to handle a suit of sails which equaled those of any seagoing racing yacht. If it had not been for the freight--some of which was perishable--the master of the _Seamew_ would have laid up until he could have got together a more numerous crew at least.

But instead of going to the seamen's employment offices, Tunis had to turn to himself, while the heavier pieces of freight were lowered down the hatchway of the schooner. It was near evening when the hatch was battened down and a small tug snaked them out of the dock and from among the greater shipping, and gave them a whistled blessing in midstream.

All hands and the skipper tailed on to the sheets and got her canvas spread. Then the skipper went below to the galley and prepared supper. Tunis Latham could be no stickler for quarter-deck etiquette on this voyage, that was sure.

But although the hands growled, and even Horry looked sour, Tunis seemed strangely excited; indeed, he looked less woebegone than he had for many a day. Something seemed to have given him a new zest in life. He even spoke to the hands cheerfully, and they were a trio of as surly dogs as ever quarreled with their food and a ship's officers.

"I'll lay up at the cove until I get a decent crew this time, if I lose all my existing contracts," Tunis said to Zebedee. "I'll find a bunch of men who are not afraid of their shadows. Huh! Hoodooed, is she? I'll show 'em that she can sail, even if Davy Jones himself sits on her bowsprit!"

There was wind enough, in all good conscience. They discovered that before they were out of the bay. It had shifted into the northeast, and the _Seamew_ went roaring away on her course under reefed canvas, heeling over to it like a racing yacht.

But the long tacks to seaward which the gale enforced made it impossible for the schooner to beat back to Hollis where the first of her freight must be discharged until after breakfast the next morning. By that time the three foremast hands who had been obliged to work double watches were fairly stewing in their own rage.

Tunis had to see his consignees while the freight was being discharged; when he got back to the wharf there was n.o.body aboard the schooner save Horry and Zebedee. The latter had a broken oar in his hand and he and the ancient seaman seemed to be in a condition of utter amazement.

"What's to do now?" demanded the skipper.

"They've gone, Cap'n Latham," stammered Zebedee. "Say they won't put foot on the _Seamew's_ deck again. That--that confounded 'Rion--"

"What's the matter with Orion now?" exclaimed Tunis. "I hoped I was well rid of him. Has he turned up here at Hollis?"

"Look at this," said Zebedee, shaking the broken oar. "Here's what it seems 'Rion found in the hold two trips back. So those fellows say. He left it with 'em. And they say the schooner is a murder ship and they won't try to work her no further."

Tunis seized the piece of oar. Along one side was a streak of faint blue paint. He knew immediately where he had seen that broken oar before--leaning against the door frame of Pareta's cottage in Portygee Town, when he had last talked with the old man's daughter.

"What in thunder!"

He had turned it over and saw the straggling letters burned into the wood: MARLIN B. Newbegin looked at Tunis with an expression which betrayed a great perturbation of soul. The old man could scarcely show pallor under the mahogany of his face, but it was plain that superst.i.tion had him by the throat.

"So this is the thing that rotten 'Rion played them with, is it?"

Tunis demanded. "Trying to make them think my beautiful _Seamew_ was once the _Marlin B._? Why, the poor fools, this broken oar came out of Mike Pareta's woodpile, or I'm a dog-fish! See that blue streak?

I saw this broken oar at Pareta's house. Bet you anything Eunez had something to do with it, too. Though why she should want to harm me, who never said a cross word to her, I can't see."

"She and your cousin are mighty thick," Zebedee said reflectively.

"That's a fact."

"Thicker than they ought to be for the girl's good, I guess," agreed Tunis. Then he said to Horry: "What's the matter with you, old man?

Do you want to desert me, too, all along of a broken oar with some silly letters burned into it?"

The ancient mariner had got a grip upon himself. The simple explanation that punctured the bubble of superst.i.tion so convincingly might not have altogether satisfied Horry. But he was a true and just man.

"I never deserted your father, Cap'n Randall Latham, not even when his ship sunk under him," the old man declared. "I was saved from that wreck by chance, not because I tried to be. And I ain't likely to desert his son."

"How about you, Zebedee?" demanded the captain of the _Seamew_.

"I am not afraid of any foolish talk, anyway, Captain Latham. Had I been I wouldn't have applied for the berth. I had heard enough about it. Eunez Pareta, I believe, talked too much to the Portygees, and that is why you couldn't keep them. But I'm not a Portygee."

"I'll say you're not," agreed Tunis. "But we're left in something of a fix. This freight for Josh Jones and his father is needed. Some other stuff consigned to Big Wreck Cove ought to be there by to-night. And I can't get a man for love or money here to help us out. I tried while I was uptown."

Zeb showed no hesitation. He shrugged his blue-jerseyed shoulders.

"Don't you cal'late we can beat down there under a reefed mainsail and jib? It'll take time, but she's the sweetest sailing craft I was ever in in my life," he said.

"She's certainly all right, 'cept for that pull to sta'bbo'd,"

muttered Horry.

"Humph! Three men to sail a schooner of this tonnage. And this isn't any capsize wind at that," murmured the captain of the _Seamew_.

"But it's got to be done. Come! Will you risk it with me?"

They looked aloft and then at each other. There was little save reflection in their several glances. Men of this caliber do not hesitate over a risk of life or ship. Cautious as Tunis Latham was, his agreement with those he had contracted with called for a prompt fulfillment of the details of the pact. Nor did the prospect of the rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the _Seamew_ should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale. And they knew that a gale was coming.

This was no place for a schooner of the _Seamew's_ size to ride out the storm. She might easily drag her anchors and go ash.o.r.e on the Hollis sands that in the past had buried many a good ship. So the trio of Cape men nodded grimly to each other and took the better chance.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

BITTER WATERS

Ah, yes! youth, and romance linked with a self-scrutiny born of her New England ancestry if not of her father's Celtic blood, had brought Sheila Macklin to her dreadful pa.s.s. One might have said, if one were hardened enough, that had the young woman "possessed an ounce of sense" she would not have made herself penniless, an outcast, and so suffered because she could not escape quickly from an environment well-nigh poignant enough to turn her brain.

She was days in recovering from the shock of the appearance of the real Ida May Bostwick at the Ball homestead. And those hours of torture that had followed had eaten like acid into Sheila's soul.

She had by no means recovered herself when Tunis had his brief interview with her. Had she not shut herself away from him--refused to even discuss the situation with the troubled skipper of the _Seamew_--she must have broken down, given way to that womanly weakness born of love for the man of her choice.

For Sheila knew how Tunis Latham suffered. She felt that her course was right; nevertheless she fully appreciated how keen the blow of her decision fell upon the partner in her sin.

A sin it was--almost, it seemed to her now, an unpardonable crime.

To seize upon another girl's ident.i.ty; to usurp another's chance; to foist herself upon the unsuspecting and kindly souls at the Ball homestead in a way that raised for them a happiness that was merely a phantom--the thought of it all was now a draught of which the dregs were very, very bitter.

Over and over again she recalled all that Ida May Bostwick had said to and of her. It was all true! Coa.r.s.e and unfeeling as the shopgirl was, Sheila lashed her troubled soul with the thought that what Ida May had said was deserved. Neither circ.u.mstances nor the fact that Tunis had suggested the masquerade excused the transgression.