PAGE 7
Salvage
by
Before starting back they made some preliminary and precautionary preparations. While Martin inventoried the stores and Amos the coal-supply, the others towed the schooner alongside and moored her. Then they shackled the schooner’s end of the chain cable around the inner barrel of the windlass and riveted the key of the shackle. They transhipped their clothing and what was left of the provisions. They also took the log-book and charts, compass, empty outer chronometer-case,–which Elisha handled tenderly and officiously by its strap in full view of the captives,–windlass-brakes, tool-chest, deck-tools, axes, handspikes, heavers, boat-hooks, belaying-pins, and everything in the shape of weapon or missile by which disgruntled Englishmen could do harm to the schooner or their rescuers.
Then they passed the rescued ones down to the schooner, and Martin told them where they would find the iron kettle for boiling codfish, with the additional information that with skill and ingenuity they could make fish-balls in the same kettle.
Martin had reported a plenitude of provisions, and anathematized the lying captain and steward; and Amos had declared his belief that with careful economy in the use of coal they could steam to the American coast with the supply in the bunkers: so they did not take any of the codfish, and the hawsers, valuable as fuel in case of a shortage, were left where they would be more valuable as evidence against the lawless, incompetent Englishmen. And they also left the dories, all but one, for reasons in Elisha’s mind which he did not state at the time.
They removed the bonds of one man–who could release the others–and cast off the fastenings; then, with Amos and a picked crew of pupils in the boat’s vitals, they went ahead and dropped the prison-hulk back to the full length of the chain, while the furious curses of the prisoners troubled the air. They found a little difficulty in steering by the winch and deck-compass (they would have mended the tiller-ropes with a section of backstay had they not bargained otherwise), but finally mastered the knack, and headed westerly.
You cannot take an Englishman’s ship from under him–homeward bound and close to port–and drag him to sea again on a diet of salt codfish without impinging on his sanity. When day broke they looked and saw the hawsers slipping over the schooner’s rail, and afterward a fountain of fish arising from her hatches to follow the hawsers overboard.
“What’s de game, I wunner?” asked Martin. “Tryin’ to starve deyselves?”
“Dunno,” answered Elisha, with a serious expression. “They’re not doin’ it for nothin’. They’re wavin’ their hats at us. Somethin’ on their minds.”
“We’ll jes let ’em wave. We’ll go ‘long ’bout our business.”
So they went at eight knots an hour; for, try as he might, Amos could get no more out of the engine. “She’s a divil to chew up coal,” he explained; “we may have to burn the boat yet.”
“Hope not,” said Elisha. “‘Tween you an’ me, Amos, this is a desperate bluff we’re makin’, an’ if we go to destroyin’ property we may get no credit for savin’ it. We’d have no chance in the English courts at all, but it’s likely an American judge ‘ud recognize our original position–our bargain to steer her in.”
“Too bad ’bout that tarred cable of ours,” rejoined Amos; “three days’ good fuel in that, I calculate.”
“Well, it’s gone with the codfish, and the fact is properly entered in the log as barratrous conduct on the part of the skipper. Enough to prove him insane.”
And further to strengthen this possible aspect of the case, Elisha found a blank space on the leaf of the log-book which recorded the first meeting and bargain to tow, and filled it with the potential sentence, “Steamer’s commander acts strangely.” For a well-kept logbook is excellent testimony in court.
Elisha’s knowledge of navigation did not enable him to project a course on the great circle–the shortest track between two points on the earth’s surface, and the route taken by steamers. But he possessed a fairly practical and ingenious mind, and with a flexible steel straight-edge rule, and a class-room globe in the skipper’s room, laid out his course between the lane-routes of the liners,–which he would need to vary daily,–as it was not wise to court investigation. But he signaled to two passing steamships for Greenwich time, and set his watch, obtaining its rate of correction by the second favor; and with this, and his surely correct latitude by meridian observation, he hoped to make an accurate landfall in home waters.