“But what did you want them for?”
“A boat from another schooner had been cast ashore. It was blowing hard, as it usually does where the Polar ice comes down into the Behring Sea. They’d been shooting seals. We meant to bring the men off if we could manage it.”
“Wouldn’t one boat have been enough?”
“No,” answered Wyllard dryly, “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 shoot them only 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. I fancy they must have broken or lost an oar then. We 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 as solid as a wall. Any way, we pulled off, and went out with a foot of water in one boat. One of the rescued men took my oar when I let it go.”
“Why did you let it go?”
Wyllard laughed in a grim fashion.
“My head was laid open with a sealing club,” he said. “Some of the other men 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 the boat, and the spray was flying everywhere. If there had been only two boats we probably would have found out our misfortune, and perhaps would have set it straight. As it was, we couldn’t tell that it was the same boat that had hailed us.”
He broke off for a moment, and then added quietly: