The captain’s face relaxed into a smile that was half amusement, half contempt.
“I just warn you; that’s all,” he repeated; and went aboard the steamer. Haley watched his departure with a chuckle.
“Get her under weigh again, Jim,” he said. “We’ll pick up our crew.”
By noon, the Brandt had run in to the small harbour where the two bug-eyes were waiting; and, that afternoon, Harvey and the others were back at work, under the abuse of Jim Adams, hounded on by him, to make up for lost time.
CHAPTER VIII
A NIGHT’S POACHING
The days that followed were bitter ones for dredging. There came in fog, through which they drifted, slowly, while it wrapped them about like a great, frosty blanket, chilling and numbing them. When the wind was light, the fog would collect for a moment in the wrinkle at the top of a sail; then, with a slat, the sail would fill out, sending down a shower of icy water, drenching the crew at their work. But the mate drove them on, with threats and the brandishing of a rope’s end.
To make matters worse, the yield of the reefs was disappointing. Bad luck seemed to be with the Brandt; and, though it was the beginning of the season, and they should have been getting a cargo rapidly, the day’s clean-up was often less than twenty bushels; which brought a storm of abuse from Haley, as though it were the fault of the men.
He took his chances with the law, for several days, and ran down into Tangier Sound, hidden in the fog, on that part of its great extent where dredging was forbidden, and only smaller craft with scrapers allowed. But the Brandt went aground, late one afternoon, on a bar off a dreary marsh that extended for miles—the most lonesome and forbidding place that Harvey had seen in all his life.
They were half the night getting clear from here, having to wait for the flood tide, and the Brandt springing a leak that kept them toiling at the pump till they were well nigh exhausted. The upshot was, that, early one morning, with the lifting of the fog, the Brandt, followed by the craft that had taken Harvey and Tom Edwards aboard, stood off from the Eastern shore, heading northwest for the mouth of the Patuxent.
To Jack Harvey and his friend, sick and weary of the life they were leading, every new move, every change of ground, keyed them up to renewed hope. They watched eagerly the distant shore toward which they were pointing, and rejoiced, in some small degree, that they were going back to where they had started from. It seemed as though there must be greater opportunity for relief in that river, with its more friendly appearing banks, than amid the wilderness of the marshy Eastern shore, to which winter gave a touch of indescribable dreariness.