“That’ll ’old till the crows come ’ome,” he muttered, as he tugged at the last hitch of the rope.
Tilting the bucket, Blueskin allowed it to fill and sink. It was now suspended at the end of a few feet of steel wire immediately under the yacht’s stern-post.
Having accomplished what he had set out to do, Carlo Bone swam back to the Lumberjack, swarmed up her side, removed and wrung out his trousers, and crept back to his bunk.
“Reckon I ain’t cried quits wi’ ’em yet,” he muttered, recalling with mingled feelings of humiliation and anger the incident when he was knocked out by a mere youth. “ ’Tany rate, I’ve done summat t’wards gettin’ my own back. Like as not them’ll have a leadin’ wind outer ’ere when them starts. An’ a fair tide. But when it comes tu goin’ about like in the Range, that there bucket’ll make ’em miss stays. They’ll be fair on the rocks afore they knows where they be.”
There was deep cunning in Carlo Bone’s plan. He counted upon the Kestrel getting under way with a fair wind and a fair tide. The crew would not be likely to notice that they were towing a bucket under the stern, although the drag would be considerable. But in the Narrows, at the entrance to the harbour, the baffling wind and the set of the tidal current would compel the Kestrel to attempt at least one tack. Then the impediment caused by the bucket would be more than sufficient to make her “miss stays,” and in that hopeless state she would be driven upon the saw-edged rocks to lee’ard almost before her crew realised their danger.
Chuckling sardonically, Blueskin lay awake in his bunk until nearly dawn—the dawn of a day on which, if his plans went aright, the Kestrel would ignominiously end her career upon the rock-strewn coast of Devon.
CHAPTER XI
How it Failed
“All clear for’ard?” shouted Patrol Leader Brandon. “Stand by to let go!”
Fifty hours had elapsed since the Kestrel found her way into Dartmouth Harbour. The summer storm had blown itself out. The Sea Scouts, having made up arrears of sleep, were in the best of spirits and keenly looking forward to the long run across West Bay and round the famous Bill of Portland.
It was almost a flat calm. The tide was still ebbing. The S.S. Lumberjack remained at anchor, repairs to her machinery being still in progress.