When the sails were apparently flat as boards Schofield made Ellinwood rig pulleys leading to the middle of the halyards so that the men could sway on them. She was fit as a racing yacht; her load was perfectly distributed and she trimmed to a hairbreadth.
An hour later they snored down upon the Night Hawk, the last vessel at the edge of the fleet.
“Better hurry!” megaphoned Stetson, tickled with himself. “Burns cleared six hours ago for 264 Freekirk Head with a thousand quintal. He’s got Boughton sewed up to buy ’em, too.”
“Bring her to!” snarled Code, and the Lass, groaning and complaining at the brutality, whirled up into the wind enough to take her sticks out. “Burns’s going home, you say? And with fish? Where’d he get ’em?”
“From me. I sold him my whole load at a better price than I would have got if I had waited to fill the Hawk’s belly and then gone home. Gave me cash and threw in a lot of bait, so I’ll stay right out here and get another load. Petty good for a Jonah––what? Ha, ha!” The man roared exasperatingly.
“Damnation!” rapped out Schofield. “Lively now! Tops’ls on her, and two of you stay aloft to shift tacks if we should need to come about.”
“Hey, you!” bawled Stetson as the Lass began to heel to the great sweep of the wind. “There’s two ahead of him, Bijonah Tanner an’ Jed Martin! Better hurry if you’re going to catch the market!”
“Hurry, is it?” growled Code to himself. “I’ll hurry so some people won’t know who it is.”
It was the first time that Code had had occasion to drive the Lass, for the Mignon fishermen heretofore had confined their labor to the shoals near home or, at farthest, on the Nova Scotia coast. The present occasion was different.