To Glover, at parting, he said, “You and me, Harry, better have no words over this—you know why. The consul here’ll send your crew home at the expense of the Gover’ment, so they’ll be all right.”
“But the Calumet— I s’pose she’ll break up where she is?”
“She may, and then she mayn’t.”
“Then I’d better go down when it moderates and see what I can do.”
“That,” answered Wesley, “is your business. As it is now, she’s abandoned, and anybody’s property that wants to board her.”
“Oh, nobody’ll board her in this weather—they’d be smashed on the ledges. Just as soon as it moderates—some time to-morrow, maybe— I’ll be down with a tug and lighten her up.”
But Wesley did not wait until it moderated. That same night, at high water, the Calumet floated off. Five hundred barrels of frozen herring transferred to the Lucy Foster helped materially in the floating of the Calumet.
“Only eight hundred barrels of salt herring in her now—we oughter be able to get her home. She’s squattin’ pretty low in the water, but we oughter get her home. And do you, Charlie, take Dan and George and Tommie and follow on behind the Lucy,” said Wesley, and in the morning light he led the way out of Canso Harbor.
IV
The Lucy Foster came sailing into Gloucester Harbor, and in her wake was the Calumet. The Lucy, under not more than half sail, was acting like a vessel that was trying to coax along the other, which was moving most painfully. Wesley, from the Lucy’s quarter, kept hailing out encouragement. “‘Most home, Charlie—keep her goin’. There’ll be good salvage for all hands, but a little extra for you, Charlie—keep her goin’. And them men to the pumps—ain’t there just a little touch left all around in that big jug to hearten ’em up a little? It’d be too bad to have her sink on us now, and she into the dock, you might say. I’ll run a bit ahead now, Charlie, and hail the steamboat people, so there’ll be a lighter alongside by the time you’re ready to anchor.”