Ethan Carlyle and Longsword stood in the waist, leaning against the schooner’s rail and listening to this conversation. When the skipper of the shallop crossed the pier and climbed into his own vessel, Ethan said:
“It impresses me oddly. It may be that the possession of important papers has made me nervous, but I can’t help feeling that the sudden hiring of that fishing-boat over there has something to do with us.”
“It may be so,” spoke the trooper. “Sure that villain was not listening to what the gentlemen were saying to ye awhile ago for nothing, Master Ethan.”
“Yes; some kind of a brown man like they have in India, and far off places like that. But he was a rare good runner, though,” continued Longsword with high admiration, “and I could reach him no more wid me foot after we’d gone a score of yards.”
There was a brisk wind blowing down stream when the tide got its fully swing towards the sea; the skipper cast off his lines and worked the Island Queen out into the river; then the mainsail, foresail and a jib were set and the vessel headed away on her journey. As they were passing the flats below the city, Ethan, who was leaning over the stern rail with Longsword fancied that he saw a dark loom some distance toward the New Jersey shore.
“It looks like a vessel of some kind,” he said to Shamus.
“Your eyes are younger nor mine,” answered the trooper. “I can see nothing.”
“I’ve been watching that for some time,” said the mate of the schooner, who was at the wheel. “Looks to me like a two master of some sort; and she’s a smart sailer, too; much faster than the Queen.”
An hour passed, and the brisk wind carried the schooner well down the river; but off on her port side clung the creeping low-lying shadow that had attracted Ethan’s attention. The sky was thickly overcast with clouds, the moon was hidden, and darkness hung blackly over the face of the waters.
“That craft may be a smarter sailer than the schooner,” said Ethan to the mate, “but she’s not showing it. She’s been hanging there on that quarter all the way down.”
“That’s what I can’t understand,” said the mate. “I’m sure she could walk away from us were she so minded, but they are holding her in for some reason; they’ve got her out of the wind about half the time.”