They worked down the Straits of San Juan de Fuca in the teeth of a light westerly, and Donald was charmed at the manner in which the schooner sailed and tacked. “Not like the Kelvinhaugh, sir,” he remarked to the skipper. “And how easy she steers! A touch of the spokes swings her.” “You’re right there, son,” said the other. “Let me tell you that you’re aboard one of the finest kind o’ craft whittled out o’ wood. You’re not in a steel barge this time. This packet will lay up to less’n four points of the wind an’ sail; the Kelvinhaugh would never steer closer’n seven. And when we strike some weather and wind you’ll find a difference too. No sloshing decks on this hooker onless she trips up.”
When Cape Flattery blinked a fare-well to them that night, Captain Nickerson set the course for a Great Circle swing to Cape Horn. “I’m goin’ to shoot her right daown and I reckon we won’t haul up anywhere this side of Cape Stiff,” he remarked to Donald and Thompson that evening. “Are you going to try the Straits of Magellan, sir?” asked Donald. The skipper shook his head. “I have thought it over, but as I’ve never been through them, and seein’ as it’s a reg’lar hell-hole of narrow channels an’ currents an’ chock-full o’ willy-waws an’ squalls, I cal’late we’re safer in open water. We’ll run Helen around the Horn an’ we’ll stop in at Monte Video for fresh meat, water and a run ashore. Naow, boys, we’ll hang out the patch an’ let her go!” And with the balloon-jib and stays’l hoisted and sheets aft, the Helen Starbuck swung away on the old deep-waterman’s track for the Line and Cape Horn.
They took their departure from Cape Flattery, and Donald streamed the patent taff-rail log. The schooner was snoring ahead to a brisk westerly, and rising and falling gently over a long rolling sea with but a slight heel to port. Axel Hansen had the wheel and Donald stood by the windlass for’ard keeping a look-out and giving an occasional glance at the side-lights in the fore-rigging. The night was spangled with stars and the bow-wave sang a low grumbling note which was conducive to sleep, but McKenzie had been too well trained aboard the Kelvinhaugh to nod on watch, so he leaned over a windlass bitt and held communion with his thoughts.
He was genuinely happy now, and something of real appreciation and love for the sea was beginning to awaken in his heart. In the Kelvinhaugh he never got a chance to become enamoured of sea-faring. His first hour aboard that ship in the Glasgow dock was the beginning of the disillusionment which finished at Royal Roads. The bullying, rough treatment, hard work and poor food on the barque had stifled the romantic spirit which had sent him aroving, but on this schooner, with good fare, warm comfortable quarters and chummy ship-mates, everything was different. Captain Nickerson—whom he had regarded with feelings akin to terror on the barque—seemed to have changed utterly. No longer did the Nova Scotian rip out strident commands punctuated with bitter oaths, nor did he maintain the Olympian aloofness of other days. The chummy, even-tempered, good-humored Canadian in command of the Helen Starbuck seemed to have no connection with the truculent, swearing, heavy-handed “bucko” mate of the lumbering Kelvinhaugh.
It was a grateful change all ’round. The bitterness and misery of other days was but a reflection of the nature of the Kelvinhaugh’s owner. David McKenzie’s harsh and vindictive soul was re-incarnated in his ship. She, like him, was ugly in form and character; her crew were the sweepings of the port—ill-fed, over-worked and driven like dogs to do the work which was required of them; her master was a “wrong ’un”—a tool of the owner and half-incompetent. Hinkel—another incompetent and another “wrong ’un”—helped to complete the sordid combination into which young McKenzie was thrust ... to be “polished off.” What was his uncle’s object?
Donald did not know a great deal about his Uncle David. His father had seldom mentioned his name, and his mother knew nothing of her husband’s brother save what little that Alec had told her, and her impressions from two interviews—both unpleasant. He did know that David McKenzie was a rich man and had interests in many ships. He knew also that he had married late in life and that he had one child. (Donald wondered if his manner to his wife and child was as coarse and as cruel as his treatment of Alec’s wife and boy.)
Thinking of his relative led him to his father’s uncle, Sir Alastair McKenzie. Was he involved in this peculiar business? Was there any way in which Donald might interfere with a succession to the McKenzie title and estate? He pondered over this conjecture, but was forced to dismiss it as improbable. Sir Alastair had a son, and the McKenzie heritage was nothing to covet. The estate was mortgaged to the hilt and Sir Alastair was nothing more than a plain Scotch farmer. If Sir Alastair and his son died, the title would go to David McKenzie. Therefore, Donald reasoned, this motive must be eliminated. It was a mystifying business, and the ship-owner’s desire to get rid of his nephew must be put down to sheer hatred or to a motive unknown.
“I’m away clear of the beast now, so why should I worry my head about him?” said the boy to himself. “I’ll make this trip with Nickerson and follow his fortunes in Nova Scotia, and as soon as I get money enough I’ll send for mother and bring her to Canada.” He squinted around at the side-lights, and seeing nothing in the shape of a vessel ahead, went aft to relieve Hansen at the wheel.
With no untoward incident to mar their passage, the Helen Starbuck romped down the parallels and swung into “the heel of the North East Trade.” Boomed out, and with square fores’l set, the schooner made brave sailing in the grip of the steady Trade wind and the patent log recorded twelve knot speeds hour after hour. These were glorious days under azure skies flecked only by the fleecy Trade clouds and brilliant with warm sunshine, and steering the able schooner in such weather was a period of rare delight to a lover of the sea and sail. Under the drive of the unvarying breeze, the deep blue of the sea rolled to the horizons in regular corrugations—their crests a broil of foam which flashed in the sun. Running before the wind, the Helen Starbuck stormed over the watery undulations with a roaring welter of foam under her sharp fore-foot, and the wake of her passage seethed like champagne and streamed astern—a path of foam-lacings defined for miles in which the log-rotator spun up the knots and the gulls dived for illusive food.