A hasty call from the man aloft brought Frontin to his feet. He darted into the cabin for a spyglass, then mounted the rigging. Sir Phelim Burke remained where he was, lost in surmise. He knew that Frontin had brought a mass of gold aboard the bark—was the Frenchman ready to abandon this gold utterly? That bespoke a greater love for Crawford than Burke had visioned in the man, who was outwardly so bitter and cynical.
“Damn the ice! The plan is madness, madness manifold!” Sir Phelim threw out his hands and gripped the rail in despair, as he stared at the fog. “Heart of the world gone wrong, and broken men adrift who pin faith to a star and drive across the horizon, blindly! Well, I think that this is not the first time men have trailed a star—but they were wise men. We are fools, Hal Crawford, and we love you—and are fools.”
Up above, Frontin was standing beside the pointing Dickon, incredulity in his face as he hurriedly focused his glass. The sullen grinding and crashing of the ice had come to a sudden pause, and the drift had ceased. That drift had been to the northward. The fog, here little more than ice-steam, did not lift but clung close down; up above, however, there was a faint stir of wind which helped to dissipate the upper layers of mist, stirring it all into yeasty heavings.
From the masthead, Frontin could make out the line of coast, or rather the cape, and calculated that the bark had drifted two or three miles farther back toward the straits. There in the north the fog was thicker and heavier, a massive bank of greyness, now swirling away, now parting for a moment, now abruptly closing again. Frontin waited for another such shifting, his glass fastened toward the end of the cape. The grey wall parted abruptly—parted to disclose a tiny, fluttering bit of colour set in its midst. Nothing else was to be seen save this scrap of colour: the flag of England, set apparently in the sky and fog. Then a sudden shrill cry burst from the man Dickon.
“Rot me—off to larboard, master! Look quick!”
Frontin swung around, and a low word broke from his lips. A great eddy of the moving fogbank had blown an open lane—a perfect channel through the mist, walled on either hand. Looking down this lane, as though the scene had been there set for his sight by some whimsy of the invisible fingers which manipulated ice and fog and sea, Frontin had one swift glimpse of a towering frigate, all sail set, not three miles distant—and from her poop drooped the white flag of France! Even as he looked, the fog closed down again and she was gone like a dream-vision. The English flag, over by the cape, had also vanished. Frontin closed his glass and descended to the deck, a touch of colour in his cheeks, his dark eyes aglow. He came to Sir Phelim and clapped the latter on the shoulder.
“Eh?” cried the startled Irishman. “What’s happened? Ye look strange——”
“It’s what is about to happen!” and Frontin laughed joyously. “Death of my life—who, think you, is out there in the fog?”
“Crawford?”
“No—Iberville! His fleet must have followed us through the straits. I saw the Profound lying out yonder not a league distant; I ought to know the old brute of a ship, since I once——” Here Frontin checked himself and bit his lip, then continued more carefully. “She has been under Iberville’s orders for two years, therefore the rest of his fleet must be in the straits. And off the cape is an English ship. Come! While the lions fight, the jackals may seize the bone. To work! If we were sure of heaven, we might tamely accept fate; but being minded to stay out of hell as long as possible, we’ll fight. All hands on deck! Sir Phelim, you and your Irishmen get up food, rum or wine, and arms. Dickon, down from aloft!”