"But what did you want them for?"
"A boat from another schooner had been cast ashore. It was blowing tolerably hard, as it usually does where the Polar ice comes down into the Behring Sea. They'd been shooting seals from her. We meant to bring the men off if we could manage it."
"Wouldn't one boat have been enough?"
"No," said Wyllard drily, "we had three, and I think that was one cause of the trouble. There was one from the other schooner. You see, those seals belonged to the Russians, and we free-lances could only shoot them clear off shore. I'm not sure that the men in the wrecked boat had been fishing outside the limit."
Agatha did not press for further particulars, and he went on:
"We managed to make a landing, though one boat went up bottom uppermost," he said. "I fancy they must have broken or lost an oar then. We also got the wrecked men, but we had trouble while we were getting the boats off again. The surf was running in savagely, and the fog shut down solid as a wall. Any way, we pulled off, and went out with a foot of water in us, while one of the rescued men took my oar when I let it go."
"Why had you to let it go?"
Wyllard laughed in a rather grim fashion.
"I got my head laid open with a sealing club," he said. "Some of the rest had their scratches, but they managed to row. For one thing, they knew they had to. They had reasons for not wanting to fall into the Russians' hands. Well, we cleared the beach, and once or twice as I tried to bale there was a shout somewhere near us, and the loom of a vanishing boat. It was all we could make out, for the sea was slopping into her, and the spray was flying everywhere. If there had only been two boats we'd probably have found out our misfortune, and perhaps have set it straight. As it was, we couldn't tell it was the same boat that had hailed us."
He broke off for a moment, and then added quietly, "Two boats reached the schooners. There was a nasty sea running then, and it blew viciously hard next day. There were three men in the other."