The sight of the Kestrel acted like a red rag to a mad bull as far as Blueskin Bone was concerned. The mere knowledge that had it not been for “them Sea Scoutses” he might have become the owner of the craft never ceased to anger him. Even when, acting upon the idea that Polkebo was getting too hot for him, he had shipped aboard the S.S. Lumberjack his resentment did not die down; it merely smouldered, to be revived to white heat when, quite unexpectedly, the Kestrel came in with the flood tide from the boisterous waters of the English Channel.
“If she ain’t mine,” he muttered, “she won’t be nobody’s—not if I can ’elp it. Too mighty cute those chaps wur last time—when they thought as I wur about. If they don’t see I, maybe they won’t be so plaguey wideawake.”
For the rest of his watch Blueskin spent most of the time taking furtive glances at the Kestrel and cudgelling his brains to devise some cunning plan to gain his ends. In order to conceal himself from observation from the Kestrel, he even declined to go ashore that evening, much to his shipmates’ surprise.
Long after the hands had turned in that night Blueskin lay awake. When at length silence reigned in the stuffy fo’c’sle of the S.S. Lumberjack, Carlo Bone slipped out of his bunk, barefooted and wearing only a pair of canvas trousers.
It was a pitch dark night. Heavy clouds overspread the sky. A hard blow was raging out in the Channel, and even the land-locked waters of Dartmouth Harbour were foam-flecked. The flood tide was on the point of turning. In fact, all the shipping at anchor on the Kingswear side were riding head to wind. Eighty yards or so away, the riding-light of the Kestrel see-sawed as the yacht rolled and strained at her borrowed moorings.
Groping about in the darkness, Blueskin soon found what he wanted: an iron bucket to which he had previously attached a short length of flexible steel wire. The bucket he lowered over the ship’s side by means of a piece of spun yarn until it hung just above the surface.
Giving a final look round to reassure himself that no one was on deck, Blueskin lowered himself into the water. Then, casting off the lashing that held the bucket, he struck out for the Kestrel, pushing the bucket in front of him.
Like most Cornishmen, Blueskin Bone was a powerful swimmer, and an expert diver. It was mere child’s-play to him to swim to the yacht’s stern, partly fill the bucket to make it float upright, and then to dive with the free end of the flexible wire in his grasp.
Blueskin had seen the Kestrel high and dry so often that he was well acquainted with the way in which her rudder fastenings were fixed. In the darkness the task he had in hand presented no difficulty. Quickly he passed the end of the wire between the rudder and the stern-post just above the lower pintle, and came to the surface with the steel rope still in his hand.
His next act was to bend the end of the wire to the handle of the bucket, so that both extremities were secured close together. The bucket was now firmly attached to the Kestrel’s rudder by the doubled parts of the wire.