In another minute they were pulling towards the Champlain, and when with the froth streaming away across the sea behind her the steamer forged ahead, a red flag with a beaver and maple-leaf in a corner fluttered aloft to the Champlain's masthead. Appleby smiled as he watched it stream out and sink again, for there was, it seemed to him, something almost ludicrous in this assertion of equality between the little rolling schooner and the big war-vessel, and he waited to see if the Commander would return the salutation or steam past in contemptuous silence. As he watched, a figure on the gunboat's bridge raised a hand, and the scream of her whistle vibrated across the waters. Again it hurled out its greeting while the schooner's flag rose and fell, and then with a last great volume of sound ringing above the clamour of the surf the gunboat steaming at full speed swept into the haze.
Next minute the boat was under the Champlain's rail, and Jordan looking down on them with a little, dry smile.
"I've no use for riling folks when it can be helped, and that fellow took his licking well," he said.
They climbed on board and hove the boat in, and Stickine followed Jordan into the cabin while Appleby sat down to tell the story to every unoccupied man of the Champlain's company. There was a broad grin on the listener's faces when he had finished, and one of them said, "There's not many men who could come out to windward of Ned Jordan."
Montreal nodded solemnly. "No," he said. "I guess you'd get tired considerably before you found one of them."
By and by Stickine came out of the cabin. "We'll have the reefed mainsail on her, boys," he said. "Now we're here and the wind's hauling westerly so we can't get back, we're going to run a little further east to a place where we might pick up a few pelts cheap from the Indians."
It blew hard presently, but the haze still followed them, and towards the close of the afternoon they hove the Champlain to, and lay with the stinging drift whirling about her plunging to a sea that frothed white as snow. Most of the men were sleeping or sitting snug in the hold when Stickine came below, and shook his head at Niven and Appleby. "The skipper's wanting you," he said.
Both lads felt a trifle uneasy as they went out on deck. They could not recollect any offences they had committed, but there was an unfortunate resemblance between Stickine's intimation and others they had received at Sandycombe when unpleasant things had followed the headmaster's request to see them in his study.
"I wonder if he means to put us ashore when we get to the place we're going to," said Niven.
"Wouldn't that please you?" asked Appleby with a little smile.