“You took a chance that we’d wait for you,” said Frontin.
“Not a bit of it. I knew you.”
Frontin grinned at that, and the two men were friends.
CHAPTER II
HE WHO ACCEPTS AN OMEN, ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY
Crawford could make out little of his new environment until morning, which disclosed the ketch L’Irondelle standing east for Cape Sable and leaning over to a whirl of wind and snow from the northwest.
The ketch was a miserable craft. Her foremast was set nearly amidships and was square rigged, with a spritsail forward, while the main carried a fore-and-aft mainsail and a tiny square topsail above. She boasted three twelve-pounders to a side, leaked like a sieve, was alive with rats and vermin and was rotten of rigging, canvas and wood from truck to keelson; her sole virtue was speed in the water. As Vanderberger explained apologetically, he had left Jamaica hoping from day to day to get a better ship and augment his crew at one blow, but luck had been against him. He was complacently hopeful of picking up an English ship near Newfoundland, unless a French frigate ran him down in Cabot Strait.
“Those cursed French and English are always fighting in these parts,” he declared mournfully, “and one can never tell when a fleet will show over the horizon.”
The men forward, under the hulking ruffian Bose, were a hard lot. Some were escaped negro slaves from Hispaniola, some were French, and the remainder were Dutch and English. All had for the past two years been engaged in the savage fighting and raids centring on Jamaica, which had been an open prey to all men since the great earthquake wiped away its defences and defenders. Most of them were drunk, for during the night Vanderberg had served out rum enough to conceal the fact that he was heading east, and when the accession of Crawford as third in command was proclaimed, it passed the vote almost without comment.
“So long as we have no sun,” said Frontin in disgust, “the rascals will hold the course we set and ask no questions. Nine-tenths of them steer by the mark on the card and cannot read the directions. But, my friend, when they discover that we head north—ha! Then you’ll see crimson snow. I’ve told them that we’re steering south, and have altered the card in case any of those who can read investigate the matter.”
Crawford shrugged.