“Certainly, sir, I will get into the boat, for I do not intend to be mutinous, but I have promised myself not to shoot any more seals, and I cannot break a promise.”
“Humph!” growled Captain Duff, “we’ll see what your promises amount to. There is neither food nor water in your boat, and I’ll see that neither you nor those with you get a mouthful of either till ye bring back a load of seals or their skins. You may choose to make your companions suffer for your fool notions, but I rather guess they’ll find a way to make you change your mind. Shove off!”
When the schooner was lost to sight in the fog, Serge rested on his oars, and turning to his friend, asked, “Do you mean to stick it out, Phil?”
“I certainly do not intend to shoot a seal this day,” was the quiet reply.
“Well, then, though I can’t exactly understand your feelings in this matter, I’ll see you through with it, and stand by you to the end, and here’s my hand on it.”
“Thank you, old fellow!” and with the warm handclasp that passed between the two lads the young hunter felt that his cause was won.
“Is it a clear case of conscience with ye, lad?” inquired the mate.
“Then ye can count me on your side too; for, as old Kite Roberson uster say, ‘any man as’ll go back on his conscience ain’t no right to call hisself a man,’ and them’s likewise my sentiments.”
In the meantime seals were gambolling about the boat on all sides, and gazing fearlessly at them from the wave crests raised by a rapidly freshening breeze, while the distant sounds of rapid firing told of the work being performed by the other hunters. The occupants of the mate’s boat talked in low tones of their situation and its possible results, while their craft drifted with the wind for nearly an hour.
Suddenly Jalap Coombs lifted his hand for silence, and listened intently for a moment. Then he said, “There’s a screw-steamer bearing down on us, and she’s not far away.”
The commanding officer of the United States revenue-cutter _Phoca_ was a far shrewder man than Captain Duff had given him credit for being. Although he had been disappointed at not overhauling the _Seamew_ before darkness hid her from view, he by no means gave up all hope of capturing the saucy schooner, cleverly as she had escaped him for the time being. Watching her through a powerful glass, long after she was lost to the unaided vision, he noted that she was gradually hauling on the wind, and shaped his own course accordingly. Shortly before daylight he stopped his engines, and set a dozen pair of the keenest ears among his crew to listening for any sounds that might come over the fog-obscured waters. He, too, heard the splashing of frolicking seals, and wisely concluded that a skipper who was so anxious to secure a few skins as to be willing to run the risk of hunting them in Bering Sea would, in his present state of fancied security, try for a few more before leaving it for good. Not long after this the correctness of his judgment was proved by the sound of shots borne faintly down the wind through the heavy air. Quickly was the _Phoca_ got under way, and stealthily, like the white ghost of a ship, she sped through the mist in the direction of the shots.