The foaming fore shore/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
FULL VOYAGE
AND Taylor came, not that season for the Autumn gales completely closed the fore shore to sailing craft, nor the next for Marie sent him private word to Gloucester of the motherhood that was forced upon her like the marriage, but the following Spring! On the heels of Winter he came winging through the strait, threading the maze of icebergs grounded on the shoals just off Château and drove into the harbor itself.
His vow had gone ringing from man to man along the foaming seaboard. The whole coast was agog for his coming. Day by day Marie had kept vigil from Beacon Hill, and day by day the admiral, old Peter and the disciplined Jacques Beauport had taken council against the lifting of the Graywing's sails. Jacques had been put on patrol duty with the Esperance, and Jacques it was who sighted Taylor's schooner off York Point and brought the news with a rush to Pellier and old Peter on the latter's new wharf.
"Voilà, the Graywing, sir!" he reported dramatically, drawing himself up proudly on the planed boards.
"The devil," growled Pellier, wheeling from his talk with old Peter. "Where now?"
Beauport pointed where the schooner, hard in the Esperance's wake, was pushing through the ice barrier. So close the barrier bulked that it ringed 'round the harbor like a wall. Three days it had lain thus, shutting in the French warship Groix, another French gunboat and two British cruisers on the fisheries patrol. Big hulks could not negotiate the narrow passage where deftly handled schooners slipped through, nor did the sullen berg show any sign of shifting.
Close-hauled, with her booms well inboard to miss the chasm-like walls of the bergs, the Graywing burst the barrier, the sunset flaming on her sails and on the fair head of the Viking Taylor at the wheel. Handling the sheets those on the wharf saw the well-known forms of his sturdy crew: the adolescent Hughie Hay, the expectorating Irish Kerrigan, the parson-like Boston Jim, the lopped-off Titan Patterson, the braw McCaig, the battered sealer Halifax, the wizened Brown.
Instantly at sight of the schooner the Château beach took up the news, fisher calling to fisher and bark hailing nearby bark.
"Mon Dieu, it is the Graywing of Gloucester come back!"
"Oui, I told one hundred of you that Capitaine Taylor would keep his oath!"
"Name of a name, then Admiral Pellier had better to look to himself or he will be left alone. What will the proud man do?"
Pellier heard the medley of comments, and his face flushed.
"Do?" he grated to Laval and Beauport. "I will show these fools! Peter, they must not meet—Taylor and Marie. I must seize his schooner before he can work any deviltry!"
"That will not be hard," ventured the fathomless Beauport.
"Name a charge, then, Jacques," flashed old Peter. "You were always quick of wit in these things."
"Why," prompted Jacques, "there is the matter of his voyage here two years ago. It is against the law for an American to load fish not caught and cured by people of the United States, and he loaded with fish you cured yourself, Peter!"
"Ho! Ho!" exclaimed old Peter, grinning hugely. "You hear, Pellier? Jacques has a long memory. You can trump up no better excuse than that. Seize his Graywing at once and hand it over to the British cruisers to take to St. John's. The Labrador is their shore, and theirs is the administering of its law. Ciel, the Admiralty Court is sometimes slow. Comprenez-vous? The Graywing may rot in the harbor of St. John's before its case is heard, and while it is rotting it can not carry anybody off from Château."
"Dieu," growled Pellier with a whip-like cracking of his fingers, "it goes against my grain, but I will do it. It is either that or"
AND he finished his sentence with a reckless shake of his head as he put off to the Groix. Immediately the Groix got under way, and as Taylor boldly rounded to his old anchorage off Laval's new room, the warship crossed his bows and dropped a boat full of men alongside.
"Your schooner is seized, Capitaine Taylor," Pellier greeted him coolly from his place in the sternsheets.
"For what?" roared Taylor, his wrath abruptly blazing like the sun-set fires.
"For a breach of the Newfoundland navigation laws," announced the Admiral vaguely. "I shall be compelled to hand the Graywing over to these British cruisers to be taken to St. John's. You and your crew will be set down by the Esperance at the nearest American port. Get into the boat and go aboard her!"
Pellier stepped on the Graywing's afterdeck, old Peter Laval, Jacques Beauport, Codroy John and a dozen more at his heels, forming two guarding lines through which the admiral beckoned captain and crew.
"Come quickly," he ordered, waving a hand to the Groix's guns frowning at point-blank range. "There is no chance for resistance."
"You cowards!" stormed Taylor, clenching his fists in their faces. "You scheming whelps! Do you think you're going to drag me off my own deck like a dog? By heavens, I'll sink to the harbor bottom first, Graywing and all!"
Defiant he crouched, his men ready set behind him, itching to hurl themselves at Pellier's men, when Codroy John's whisper snarled in his ear. Codroy stood at the foot of one of the guarding lines, nearest to Taylor, and over his massive shoulder he spat the words through his beard.
"In the name o' the Lard, go aboard, Captain!" he urged. "The Esperance be as swift a schooner as your Graywing and she do lie nearer to the stages. Will you take a look?"
Taylor darted a furtive glance shoreward, and his blood leaped. On old Peter's stagehead stood Marie, with old Anne by her side holding by the hand her toddling granddaughter. Fearful lest Pellier should see the burning in his eyes, the violet flash in Marie's, he turned his head and searched Codroy John's face. Instantly he read its friendliness, and he took up the Terra Novan's cue.
"I don't know, boys o' mine," he spoke, turning to his men with a show of indecision but passing them a warning wink; "when it comes down to the fine thing, I don't know. I don't care for myself or the schooner, but you fellows have kin back home. I forgot that. It isn't fair to you. Maybe we'd better go aboard the Esperance and fight our case with the law instead of with our fists."
"Now, that is something sensible, Capitaine," cut in Pellier, growing very uneasy at the prospect of stubborn resistance. "It is under the law I am acting, and you have the very same privilege."
"All right, then," surrendered Taylor, "just a minute to get the Graywing's log and I'll be with you. I'll promise not to dig up any weapons in the cabin, but send a man with me for formality—Codroy John, if you like!"
He was off to his cabin as he spoke, Codroy John at his heels, anticipating the admiral's nod of assent for fear he should depute some one else.
"Well, Codroy," demanded Taylor, facing the Terra Novan in the closed cabin, "are you with her or with them? With her, I take it! And the Esperance is swift, is she, and near the stages? But what about the crew aboard her?"
"They be Newfoundlanders like myself," boomed Codroy John. "Aye, and like myself they be with her. Godfather I were to her, Captain Taylor, and I do love her like the real father she never have had or maybe like the—the—the real husband she never have had. The admiral and old Peter and Beauport do plan wonderful well, but they do forget we Newfoundlanders be God-fearing men. They have gone beyond the law o' God and man, and I will never forgive them for tricking her till I do see her back in your arms. The Esperance be ready, Captain. Marie be on the wharf. Will you take the chance?"
"Will I?" exploded Taylor, grabbing his log. "Watch me, Codroy! Come on, before Pellier has a change of mind."
The Graywing's log under his arm, he led the way into the admiral's waiting boat and the rest of his men filed after. Pellier, Peter, Beauport and the men of the Groix took their places and the rowers sent the craft foaming alongside the Esperance. Taylor noted that the auxiliary vessel was not at anchor, but laying to under foresail and jib, and on her deck he glimpsed her crew, six rugged Newfoundlanders whom Codroy John had vouched for.
On to the Esperance's deck Pellier herded them, stepping aft himself to give final orders to his men before going back to the Groix. The grinning Peter stepped with him and Beauport, both anxious to see the last of Taylor, but their last sight was hardly what they bargained for.
"Overboard with them all!" Taylor yelled before Pellier could give his orders. "Overboard with them, boys o' mine!"
With a roar of exultation his crew rushed the men of the Groix, Codroy John and his Newfoundlanders flocking to their aid, stamping up and down the Esperance's deck, smiting and wrestling at her rail, Irish Kerrigan, Boston Jim, Patterson, Brown, Hughie Hay, McCaig, Tom Halifax and Bolero the cook, smothering Pellier's force in the unexpectedness of their attack and hurling them into the harbor water.
Taylor himself was locked with the admiral, old Peter and Jacques, fighting the three as an ordinary person would fight a single foe. Vainly they lunged and struck at him. Viking that he was he laughed under their blows, herding them to the Esperance's rail and knocking Beauport sheer over it with a lightning blow. Old Peter rushed but toppled back from Taylor's straight-arm punch, caught his legs against the rail and followed Beauport, while Pellier was plucked from the deck in the Gloucester man's arms and cast overside.
"My turn now, Pellier!" Taylor shouted as he splashed. "My turn, Jacques! My turn, Peter, you foxy old devil!"
HE JUMPED for the Esperance's wheel as he cried. His crew of the Graywing and Codroy's of the Esperance were at the main-sheet hoisting the big mainsail, and as he put over the spokes he felt the clean-lined schooner answer like his own. Half a cable's length away old Peter's long wooden jetty ran out into the water, Marie, old Anne and the child on its edge. As the Esperance momentarily luffed up Marie suddenly leaped the three-foot gap to the schooner's rail.
Across the slant of the afterdeck she slid, panting with excitement, and Taylor, his right hand on the wheel, caught her to him with his left, holding her thus for a second even as he held the schooner to the jetty.
"Marie, Marie, my flower of the coast!" he breathed, his Viking blood pounding to the thrill, to the danger, to the touch of her clinging hands on his free arm and the whipping of her hair against his cheek. "But your child—the little Madeline?"
"My mother keeps her till things blow clear and we are free, and then she will bring her to me. She has turned to me at the last, my mother, just as Codroy turned."
"Good!" exulted Taylor.
"But the barrier," cried Marie, "the ice-barrier! I pray to God we may pass!"
She trembled against him, her violet eyes were ablaze with the fire of a woman awakened to the crisis of her life. Out beyond yonder ring of icebergs lay the open sea, a free path down to Gloucester, a year of fretting under Pellier's enforced marriage yoke, then release and happiness under the law. It was all that stood between her and another life and through the gap in the ice wall Pellier and his watch-dog cruisers could not go.
Dieu, it was a stake! Dieu, how she prayed and clung as Taylor steered for the barrier under full sail! Château Harbor was in a tumult, a thousand clamors rising in the early dark that dropped suddenly as the sun failed. The beach was a-roar with fishers' shoutings, a-rumble with the thud of their feet as they ran to the stage heads to keep the Esperance in sight.
Like a witch the schooner sailed. Through the creeping dark and the swirl of mist that came with the dark, her sails gleamed white, pointing for the ice-barrier. Dead ahead, the Groix's boats were picking up Pellier and his men and the second French gunboat along with the two British cruisers were moving from their moorings to come to the Groix's assistance. But many crafts were in their way, schooners and brigantines at anchor, and before the war-ships could close the cordon the Esperance broke through in 'zigzag tacking and plunged for the gap amid the bergs.
Though the harbor surface was dark, the glittering pinnacles of the bergs still caught the rays of the sunken sun and glowed blood-red like the spires of massed cathedrals in the dusk. On the ruby peaks perched the resting sea-birds, puffins, guillemots, gulls, razor-billed auks, all black as ebony against the crimson afterglow, their sleepy mutterings drowned by the roar of the waves and the rumble of the air in the ice caverns beneath them.
Like the crash of cannon rose the rumble of the air as the Esperance approached the passage. Like the roar of surf on a reef broke the thunder of the swells across the emerald ice ledges. But above these both, another sound ripped through the air—the belching guns of the cruisers.
"By heavens, is the madman firing at us?" gasped Taylor.
"No, over us," cried Marie, watching the red flares of the racing gunboats. "Over us—to close the passage. Don't you see? Mon Dieu, don't take time to close-haul or"
The rest of her words were lost in the bursting of shells on the ice pinnacles ahead, in the wailing of startled seabirds and the crash of tons of berg tips into the gap.
Marie was right. There was no time to close-haul the schooner.
"Hold hard!" warned Taylor. "Every man hold!"
Wing and wing he drove her at the cleft, her foresail to starboard, mainsail to port, the ends of her booms rasping great furrows in the ice wall that was crumbling under the shelling. Ice fragments were raining all about, and Taylor half-stooped at the wheel over the crouching Marie, shielding her with his body against the falling lumps.
A moment the Esperance wedged. Then the vast drawing power of her canvas together with the lift of the surge through the gap carried her on. Her chafed booms stood out again, and, the passage closed behind her by falling pinnacles against all craft large or small, the schooner was gone in the dark of the open sea, driving wing and wing for Gloucester.
So deep was the gloom through which they bored that the sails and the very masts themselves were lost in the murk above. Even the sluiced decks seemed to dissolve underfoot, taking the blurry forms of the rest of the crew with them.
Taylor and Marie, isolated at the wheel, seamen to skim a strange sea all their own, even as their hearts skimmed a strange new life all their own, driving southward Viking-prowed down the foaming foreshore of their love!