"Good ... the cargo will be on deck, waiting."
Hours later, in silence and darkness, he watched the last sack go over the side into the big, flat-bottomed scow. The scow had made several trips, always careful to show no lights and to moor herself on the off side of the schooner. Busch came aboard and signed the receipt, then gripped Jean's hand. "Thank you, my friend! Thank you!" he whispered.
The scow slipped away into the darkness. A few lights sparkled from the Castle on the Hill, and the snows of Mount Edgecumbe glimmered faintly through the night. Barney Kohl came down the deck. "If it wasn't for her," he said, "we--" "Get everybody on deck. No lights, no noise. Then haul us up to the anchor." "You going to slip the anchor?"
"And lose it? Not unless I have to."
A soft wind was blowing over the bay as the Susquehanna came swiftly and silently to life. Clothes rustled, a knot struck the deck, a board creaked, ghostly hands moved on a line.
Kohl spoke. "Over the anchor, Captain."
Several of the crew were beside Jean, busy with a queer contrivance. He looked around at Kohl. "All right, take her in. Gently now." T'heir only worry was the patrol ship; the watchers there might be drunk or might not. There was no sound now from the Lena. Earlier there had been loud laughter and occasional singing.
"Ben?"
"Yes, Cap'n?"
"Ready?"
"Sure as you're alive."
Several of the crew moved up beside him and together they lowered the contrivance over the side and anchored it in place. It was a long, narrow raft that supported two thin masts and a boom. On the end of one mast and on the boom, lights were mounted. From a distance, if the observer was drunk enough, it would look as if the schooner were still there. "Douse your lights, Kohl. Then light these."
The tide was setting northward toward Channel Rock. Jean let the schooner drift, and there was no sound above the ripple of water past her hull. "When she comes abeam of the Rock," Jean said, "shake out a jib. I want no noise. Sound carries too well over the water at night." There was, for several minutes, no other sound. Then across the water on the patrol ship somebody moved and spoke. Kohl swore softly and Jean held his breath. The schooner seemed to lie still on the dark water, and ashore on Japonski Island, an Indian chanted. Behind him, higher in the forest, a lone wolf howled inquiringly into the night. The night gave back its echoes to his repeated question.
"We're movin'!" Pete Noble whispered hoarsely. "Look at them lights!" Astern of them, almost fifty yards off, were the lights that simulated the schooner. They were moving but the movement was desperately slow and at any moment some drunken sailor aboard the Lena might realize something was wrong. The crew stood in silence, almost afraid to breathe, wondering what a Russian prison would be like.
"Channel Rock ahead, Cap'n. Shall I shake out the jib?"
"Hold it."
The minutes walked by on cat feet. A star appeared through a veil of cloud, then was quickly banished behind a dark mass of rolled black-cotton cloud. The patrol ship was well astern now. Somewhere ashore and far off, a dog barked. Channel Rock was abeam. "All right, Barney," Jean said, and watched the white flag of the jib shake out and fill itself with the light breeze. "Stand by the mizzen," he said, after a minute. Channel Rock fell astern and the dark bulk of Battery Island loomed on the port side, yet they were still far from free. There was no more time. "All right, Barney. Get some sail on her!" Smartly the mizzen was hauled aloft, then the mains'l. The Susquehanna gathered speed. Out from behind Japonski Island the wind filled her sails and she heeled over and began to dip her bows deeper. With luck they would soon have a full cargo and a ticket home.
"Sail, ho!" The call, from the lookout in the bow, was low and desperate. Jumping to the bulwark, Jean strained his eyes into the darkness. A big square-rigger was coming up the Western Channel, headed into port under a full head of sail, although even as they sighted her she began to take in canvas. Barney swore. "Look at that, would you?"
"I'm looking."
She was bearing down upon them and coming fast The man at the wheel turned and glanced at Jean but LaBarge shook his head. To change course now would be to lose distance they could not afford, yet the big windjammer was headed as if to run them down.
"Cap'n!" The man at the wheel had a pleading note in his voice.
"Hold your course!"
Kohl drew a sharp breath and looked up at the towering heights of canvas. Before he could speak he was interrupted by a shout from the square-rigger and a command to put the wheel over. The big ship sheered off and a man ran shouting to the rail. A dozen faces joined him, peering over the side of the schooner. A rough voice hailed them. "What ship is that? Who are you?" The hail was in Russian, then in English. LaBarge ignored the shouts and then suddenly, in the white light from a scuttle, he saw a face, and it was the face he could never forget, that would always be with him. There it was, not more than heaving-line distance away, and for a moment as the two ships passed their eyes met across the space, and then as they drew apart, he lifted a hand. She hesitated, then waved back, a vague, sad gesture in the night, and then the square-rigger fell astern and there was no sound, no light, and only a memory of a white face lonely in the light from an open scuttle, and the memory of a girl who had ridden beside him over the tawny, sunlit hills. The schooner dipped her bow and spray swept the deck. On the wind there was a smell of open sea and of the far-off pine-clad islands to the north, those far green islands where the schooner was bound.
Chapter 17
Within a very short time Baron Zinnovy would realize that despite all his efforts the wheat had been delivered, and he would know that LaBarge and the Susquehanna were at large in the Alexander Archipelago. The immediate problem was obvious. They must be where the patrol ship was not, they must pick up the cargo of furs as planned, and slip away to the south at the first opportunity thereafter.
The schooner carried eighteen men and three officers, all carefully selected men. A third of the number could have handled her, but the others were needed for trading, fighting, or any move LaBarge might make ashore. "We're pointing for Cross Sound. Do you know it, Kohl?" "As well as any man, which means nothing. I know there's glaciers north of it that keep feeding ice into the Sound, and there are bad fogs." "Do you know a small cove with an island in its mouth? It's on the north coast of Chichagof?"
"That's old Skayeut's village."
"All right. Take us there."
Jean walked forward to the waist. There were no sails in sight and they could expect a few hours' grace. With the following wind they could make good time and farther north they could hug the coast. The wind was cold now, the sea choppy. From now on they would need luck, ingenuity, and every bit of their combined knowledge. Fortunately, the schooner was new, she could sail close to the wind and could carry canvas.
The shores of the island, when they reached it, were heavily wooded right to the water's edge. Here and there a small indentation, each with a minute section of beach, broke the monotony of the forest-clad shore. The morning was bright and the day cold. Taking the schooner in past the George Islands they reached toward the cove, seeing no sign of life except a lone tern floating comfortably on the gray sea.
"The entrance is narrow," Kohl advised, "right abeam of the island." It opened before them as he spoke and he conned the schooner into the opening between island and shore. Trees came down to the water and there was a fringe of ice along the shore. Inland, over the trees, they detected a column of smoke. "This Skayeut," Kohl said, "he's a mean old blister."