“Don’t know,” replied the watchman. “The light-keeper said he could only just make her out in the haze.”
“Is she ashore on the shoal?”
“Don’t seem to be. As far as he can see, she’s a bit to the south o’ the shoal, but she’s had her sticks blown out of her, or something.”
“I haven’t seen the tug go off,” observed Jack.
“She ain’t here, but Barker’s on the job, all right. He’s scared stiff lest the schooner is one o’ his boats. Shouldn’t wonder if she is. The Grace and Ella ought to ha’ got in last night, but she didn’t.”
“The Grace and Ella!” repeated Jack. The name had a peculiar significance for him. That was the schooner which his own father had owned in partnership with Simon Barker when the robbery had led to the severing of their business relations.
“I hope it isn’t the Grace and Ella,” said the boy anxiously. “Somehow—I don’t know—well, she isn’t in the family now, of course, but all the same I hate the idea of anything happening to her.”
“So does Barker!” grinned the watchman, whose sympathies lay more with the men on the schooner than with the owner’s pocket. “His tug went up to Rockmore this morning with a tow, and he’s hanging on to the telephone and nearly having a fit, trying to get hold o’ Burke, the cap’n.”
“Rockmore is a tidy distance off,” commented Jack. “Anything might happen to the schooner by the time the tug reaches her from there. But the schooner isn’t ashore, you say?”
“Not as far as the light-keeper could make out. And the tide is making the other way, so she’ll be all right for a while, so long as she ain’t leaking bad.”