Seamen hate farewells. Make a brave welcome if you must, but let us slip away to sea unobtrusively—between sunset and dawn—with the last ringing laugh in our ears, but do not let us go regretfully, with the memory of a long hand-clasp and hint of tears in an upturned face. These are the usual seamen’s desires—merely to depart with a nonchalant “So long!”, but Donald had no notion of such a curt parting. He wanted to spin the bitter-sweetness of it out, as lovers are fain to do. He gave Ruth’s hand a warm squeeze and held it for a moment. She was looking at him with wide-open blue eyes, with a hint of fear in them. “Good-bye, Ruth,” he said quietly, “I hope to see you when we come back. Good-bye!” She murmured something, and abruptly he swung away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The West Wind slipped out of the harbor and Don stared up at the Nickerson house to see if Ruth would wave. A female figure stood on the verandah and Donald made a farewell gesture with his cap. It might have been Ruth—he was not sure—but the girl waved in return, Donald was certain, and the skipper, taking a squint through his binoculars, said it was his sister.
“Wonder where Helena is?” said McKenzie.
“Oh, guess she’s in the house somewhere,” replied the skipper somewhat dolefully, looking back at the receding house on the hill. He turned to the wheel. “She’s a mighty fine girl, Miss Stuart,” he remarked, looking aloft at the main-gaff. The other smiled. “She sure is, Captain. A fine girl!”
Clear of the Eastville Cape, they hoisted the light sails and headed up the coast to the eastward, bound for the Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence for a baiting of fresh herring. With this secured, they would fish in the Gulf and on the Newfoundland Banks during the summer, until their “salt was wetted.” “We’ve got to hustle to beat Ira Burton,” remarked the skipper. “He’s at the Islands now, I’ll be bound, and yet ... he may not. I h’ard there was a mull of ice in Canso Straits and I’m wondering what is the best course to take.”
Next morning they were up with Cranberry Island—the north-eastern extremity of Nova Scotia, and the skipper piloted the schooner into Canso Harbor. “Um!” he grunted as he scanned the anchorage. “No schooners here. Must ha’ gone up the Straits.” They came to an anchor, dropping the headsails only, and the skipper and Don pulled ashore in a dory. “We’ll go up to the Post Office first, Don, an’ see the weather bulletins, and then we’ll do some scouting around for news of what’s doing in the Straits.” At the Post Office, Captain Nickerson asked to see the weather reports for two weeks past, and when they were handed to him, he read them carefully. Then he went to a telephone and called up Port Hawkesbury—a small town in the Straits about twenty-five miles from Canso. When he came from the telephone he had a concerned look on his face and was pulling nervously at his moustache. “Ira Burton was there a day or two ago,” he said, “but they tell me he slipped away in the night. Naow, I see by the bulletins that the wind for the last two weeks a’most has been from a quarter that’ll drive all the Gulf ice into the mouth of Canso Straits, and it’ll need a stiff southerly or easterly to clear it. I’m thinkin’ Burton has figured that all aout, and he’ll be gone north-about, same as I’m plannin’, and he’ll get to the Madaleens through Cabot Straits. When the drift ice is crowdin’ down here it’ll be clear up above.”
They got aboard, they got their anchor, hoisted the headsails and shot out of Canso and up the coast and around Cape Breton Island. In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, between Cape North and the islands of St. Paul, they came up with two fishing schooners steering west. It had just broken daylight and the wind was light, and when the day grew brighter they saw that one vessel was a Lunenburg schooner of a new model, but the sight of the other craft caused Nickerson to jump below for his binoculars.