Next morning at breakfast, about four o’clock, Code told his crew the situation. He knew his men thoroughly and had been friends with most of them all his life.
“There’s likely to be trouble, and I may be taken away, but if that happens Pete will tell you what to do. Don’t sight Swallowtail until your salt is all wet. Bring home a topping load and you’ll share topping.”
Code did not go out that morning. Instead, he tried to shake off his troubles long enough to study the fish––which was his job on the Charming Lass.
While not a Bijonah Tanner, Code bade fair to be his equal at Bijonah’s age. He came of a father with an instinct for fish, and he had inherited that instinct fully. Under Jasper he had learned much, but it was another matter to have some one on hand to read the signs rather than being cast upon his own resources.
The fish, from the trawl-line and Pete’s reports of dory work, had been running rather big. This 153 pleased him, but he knew it could not last; and he sat with his old chart spread out before him on the deck––a chart edged with his father’s valuable penciled notes.
Suddenly, while in the almost subconscious state that he achieved when very “fishy,” the persistent voice of the cook broke through the wall of unconsciousness.
“Smoke on the port quarter, skipper! Smoke on the port quarter, skipper!”
The phrase came with persistent repetition until Code was fully alive to its meaning and glanced over his left shoulder.
Above the line of dark blue that was the ocean, and in the light blue that was the sky, was etched a tree-shaped brown smudge.
Steamer smudges were not an unusual sight, for not fifty miles east was the northern track of the great ocean steamers––a track which they were gradually approaching as they made their berths. But a steamer smudge over the port quarter, with the Lass’s bow headed due north, was an entirely different thing.