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Harbor of Doubt, The

<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2> <h3>A RECOVERED TREASURE</h3> For five days Code yawned or rushed through the greater part of Nat’s stock of lurid literature. It was the one thing that kept him from falling into the black pit of brooding; sometimes he felt as though he must go insane if he allowed himself to think. He had not the courage to tear aside the veil of dull pain that covered his heart and look at the bleeding reality. He was afraid of his own emotions. It was impossible for him to go lower in the scale of physical events. Nat was about to triumph, and Code himself was forced to admit that this triumph was mostly due to Nat’s own wits. First he had stolen Nellie Tanner (Code had thought a lot about that ring missing from Nellie’s hand), then he had attached the Charming Lass in the endeavor to take away from him the very means of his livelihood. Then something had happened. Schofield did not know what it was, but something evidently very serious, for the next thing he knew Nat had crushed 190 his pride and manhood under a brutal and technical charge of murder. But this was not all. His victim escaping him with the schooner and the means of livelihood, Burns had employed a traitor in the crew to poison the bait and force him to come ashore to replenish his tubs. Once ashore, the shanghaiing was not difficult. Code had no doubt whatever that the whole plan, commencing with the disappearance of the man in the motor-dory and ending with his abduction from St. Pierre, was part and parcel of the same scheme. In this, his crowning achievement of skill and cunning, Burns had showed himself an admirable plotter, playing upon human nature as he did to effect his ends. For it was nothing but a realization of Peter Ellinwood’s weakness in the matter of his size and fighting ability that resulted in his (Code’s) easy capture. Schofield had no shadow of a doubt but that the big Frenchman had been hired to play his part, and that, in the howling throng that surrounded the fighters the crew of the Nettie B. were waiting to seize the first opportunity to make the duel a mêlée and effect their design in the confusion. Their opportunity came when the Frenchman tried to trip Pete Ellinwood after big Jean had fallen and Code rushed into the fray with the ferocity 191 of a wildcat. Some one raised the yell “Police,” he was surrounded by his enemies, some one rapped him over the head with a black-jack, and the job was done. It was clever business, and despite the helplessness of his position, Code could not but admire the brilliance of such a scheming brain, while at the same time deploring that it was not employed in some legitimate and profitable cause. Now he was in the enemy’s hands, and St. Andrew’s was less than a dozen hours away; St. Andrew’s, with its jail, its grand jury, and its pen. Life aboard the Nettie B. had been a dead monotony. On the foremast above Code’s prison hung the bell that rang the watches, so that the passage of every half hour was dinged into his ears. Three times a day he was given food, and twice a day he was allowed to pace up and down the deck, a man holding tightly to each arm. The weather had been propitious, with a moderate sea and a good quartering wind. The Nettie had footed it properly, and Code’s experienced eye had, on one occasion, seen her log her twelve knots in an hour. The fact had raised his estimation of her fifty per cent. It must not be supposed that, as Code sat in his hard wooden chair, he forgot the diary that he had read the first afternoon of his incarceration. Often he thought of it, and often he drew it out from its 192 place and reread those last entries: “Swears he will win second race,” “Says he can’t lose day after to-morrow,” “I wonder what the boy has got up his sleeve that makes him so sure he will win?” At first Code merely ascribed these recorded sayings of Nat Burns to youthful disappointment and a sportsmanlike determination to do better next time. But not for long. He remembered as though it had been yesterday the look with which Nat had favored him when he finally came ashore beaten, and the sullen resentment with which he greeted any remarks concerning the race. There was no sportsmanlike determination about him! Code quickly changed his point of view. How could Nat be so sure he was going to win? The thing was ridiculous on the face of it. The fifty-year-old May had limped in half an hour ahead of the thirty-year-old M. C. Burns after a race of fifteen miles. How, then, could Nat swear with any degree of certainty that he would win the second time. It was well known that the M. C. Burns was especially good in heavy weather, but how could Nat ordain that there would be just the wind and sea he wanted? The thing was absurd on the face of it, and, besides, silly braggadocio, if not actually malicious. And even if it were malicious, Code thanked Heaven that the race had not been sailed, and that he had 193 been spared the exhibition of Nat’s malice. He had escaped that much, anyway. However, from motives of general caution, Code decided to take the book with him. Nat had evidently forgotten it, and he felt sure he would get off the ship with it in his possession. Now, as he drew near to St. Andrews, he put it for the last time inside the lining of his coat, and fastened that lining together with pins, of which he always carried a stock under his coat-lapel. As Schofield had not forgotten the old log of the M. C. Burns, neither had he forgotten the threat he made to Nat that he would try his best to escape, and would defy his authority at every turn. He had tried to fulfil his promise to the letter. Twice he had removed one of the windows before the alert guard detected him, and once he had nearly succeeded in cutting his way through the two-inch planking of his ceiling before the chips and sawdust were discovered, and he was deprived of his clasp-knife. Every hour of every day his mind had been constantly on this business of escape. Even during the reading, to which he fled to protect his reason, it was the motive of every chapter, and he would drop off in the middle of a page into a reverie, and grow inwardly excited over some wild plan that mapped itself out completely in his feverish brain. <div>194</div> Now as they approached St. Andrew’s his determination was as strong as ever, but his resources were exhausted. Double-guarded and without weapons, he found himself helpless. The fevered excitement of the past four days had subsided into a dull apathy of hurt in which his brain was as delicate and alert as the mainspring of a watch. He was resigned to the worst if it came, but was ready, like a panther in a tree, to spring at the slightest false move of his enemies. Now for the last time he went over his little eight-by-ten prison. He examined the chair as though it were some instrument of the Inquisition. He pulled the bed to pieces and handled every inch of the frame. He emptied every compartment of the queer hanging cabinet that had been stuffed with books and miscellanies; he examined every article in the room. He had done this a dozen times before, but some instinct drove him to repeat the process. There was always hope of the undiscovered, and, besides, he needed the physical action and the close application of his mind. So, mechanically and doggedly he went over every inch of his little prison. But in vain. The roof and walls were of heavy planking and were old. They were full of nicks as well as wood-knots, and the appearance of some of the 195 former gave Code an idea. He went carefully over the boards, sticking his thumb-nail into them and lifting or pressing down as the shape of the nick warranted. For they resembled very much the depressions cut in sliding covers on starch-boxes whereby such covers can be pushed in their grooves. At any other time he would have considered this the occupation of a madman, but now it kept him occupied and held forth the faint gleam of hope by which he now lived. Suddenly something happened. He was lying across his immovable cot fingering the boards low down in the right rear corner when he felt something give beneath his thumb. A flash of hope almost stifled him, and he lay quiet for a moment to regain command of himself. Then he put his thumb again in the niche and lifted up. With all his strength he lifted and, all at once, a panel rushed up and stuck, revealing a little box perhaps a foot square that had been built back from the rear wall of the old storeroom. That was all, except for the fact that something was in the box––a package done up in paper. For a while he did not investigate the package, but devoted his attention to sounding the rest of the near-by planks with the hope that they might give into a larger opening and furnish a means of egress. For half an hour he worked and then gave up. He 196 had covered every inch of wall and every niche, and this was all! At last he turned to the contents of the box that he had uncovered. Removing the package, he slid the cover down over the opening for fear that his guard, looking in a window, might become aware of what he had discovered. Then, sitting on the bed, he unwrapped the package. It was a beautiful, clear mirror bound with silver nickel and fitted with screw attachments as though it were intended to be fastened to something. At first this unusual discovery meant nothing whatever to him. Then, as he turned the object listlessly in his hands, his eyes fell upon three engraved letters, C. A. S., and a date, 1908. Then he remembered. When he was twenty years old his father had taught him the science of navigation, so that if anything happened Code might sail the old May Schofield. Because of the fact that a position at sea was found by observing the heavenly bodies, Code had become interested in astronomy, and had learned to chart them on a sky map of his own. The object in his hand was an artificial horizon, a mirror attached to the sextant which could be fixed at the exact angle of the horizon should the real horizon be obscured. This valuable instrument his 197 father had given him on his twenty-first birthday because the old man had been vastly pleased with his interest in a science of which he himself knew little or nothing. Code remembered that, for a year or two, he had pursued this hobby of his with deep interest and considerable success, and that his great object in life had been to some day have a small telescope of his own by which to learn more of the secrets of the heavens. But, after his father died, he had been forced to take up the active support of the family, and had let this passion die. But how did it happen that the mirror was here? He recalled that the rest of his paraphernalia had gone to the bottom with the May Schofield. It was true that he had not overhauled his equipment for some time, and that it had been in a drawer in the May’s cabin, but that drawer had not been opened. He pursued the train of thought no farther. His brain was tired and his head ached with the strain of the last five days. His last hope of escape had only resulted in his finding a forgotten mirror, and his despair shut out any other consideration. He had not even the fire to resent the fact that it was in Burns’s possession, and concealed. It was his, he knew, and, without further thought of it, he thrust it into his pocket just as he heard the 198 men outside his little prison talking together excitedly. “By George, she looks like a gunboat,” said one. “I wonder what she wants?” “Yes, there’s her colors. You can see the sun shinin’ on her brass guns forward.” “There, she’s signalin’. I wonder what she wants?” Code walked idly to his windows and peered out, but could not see the vessel that the men were talking about. “She wants us to heave to, boys,” sang out Nat suddenly. “Stand by to bring her up into the wind. Hard down with your wheel, John!” As the schooner’s head veered Code caught a glimpse of a schooner-rigged vessel half a mile away with uniformed men on her decks and two gleaming brass cannon forward. Then she passed out of vision. “She’s sending a cutter aboard,” said one man. <hr class='toprule' /> 199 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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