"Whisper of wind?" Archie exclaimed. "'Twas a whole gale of wind!"
"Pt!"
"And the ice did drive to the east."
"Pt!" says Cap'n Saul. "You'll never make a sealin' skipper, Archie. I smells the ice off the Horse Islands."
It was foul weather all the way from St. John's to the floes. The fleet sailed into a saucy head-wind and a great slosh of easterly sea. It was a fair start and no favour, all managed by the law; the fat on the floes was for the first crews of the fleet to find and slaughter it. And there was a mighty crowd on the water-front to wish the fleet well; and there was a vast commotion, too—cheering and waving and the popping of guns.
At sea it was a helter-skelter race for the ice. Cap'n Saul touched up the Rough and Tumble beyond St. John's Narrows; and the ship settled to her work, in that rough and tumble of black water, with a big white bone in her teeth—shook her head and slapped her tail and snouted her way along to the northeast. A whisp of fog came with the night. It was thick weather. But Cap'n Saul drove northeast, as before—slap into a smothering sea; and by this the fleet, tagging behind, was befooled and misled.
After dark, Cap'n Saul doused the lights and switched full steam to the west; and when day broke the Rough and Tumble was alone, come what might of her isolation—and come it did, in due course, being all a-brew for Cap'n Saul and crew, even then, in the northwest.
As for the fleet, it was off on fools' business in the bare seas to the east.