It was the night of the day that opened this chapter.
The lanterns by which the men had dressed down had been lifted from their supports, the cod livers dumped into the gurry-butt, and the tables removed from the rails. The two men on the first watch were sharpening the splitting knives on a tiny grindstone and walking forward occasionally to see that the anchor and trawl buoy lights were burning.
The still air resounded with the snores of the exhausted men forward in the forecastle.
Silently out of the darkness a dory came toward the schooner, pulled by the brawny arms of two men. In the stern of the oncoming boat sat a solitary figure, who strained his eyes toward his destination.
The dory was within fifty yards of the _Lass_ before the men on deck became aware of its approach. Then, fearing some evil work in connection with the last desperate days of fishing, they rushed to the bulwarks and challenged the newcomers. They did not see, a mile away, a schooner without lights gently rising and falling on the oily sea.
"Who is that?" demanded one man, but he received no answer except "A friend," and the boat continued its stealthy approach. It drew alongside the ladder in the waist, and the man in the stern-sheets rose. Kent of the _Lass's_ crew leaned over the side and threw the light of his lantern upon the man.
"By God," he cried like one who has seen a ghost, "it's the skipper."
The _Nettie B._ was surging north, nearing Cape Breton. Nat Burns sat moodily on the top of the house and watched the schooner take 'em green over her bows.
Within the last day a fog with a wind behind it had drifted across the lead-colored ocean; and now, although the fog was gone, the wind was still howling and bringing with it a rising sea.
The equinoxes were not far off, and all skippers had a weather eye out, and paid especial attention to the stoutness of lashings and patched canvas.
Never had Burns been in a blacker mood, and never had he better cause.
He was three days from St. Andrew's, and there he had become acquainted with several facts.
The first was that no Canadian gunboat by the name of _Albatross_ had called at said port and left any prisoner by the name of Code Schofield--in fact, such gunboat had not called at all.