Far out, a few stray vessels, close reefed and rolling heavily as they ran, were making for the harbour; the ends of their lean booms, with sails tied in, looked like bare poles. Jack Harvey noted one thing, with especial satisfaction. Not a single craft in all the harbour fleet was going out, or making any preparation therefor. Harvey gave a sigh of relief, as he went below again.
“Tom,” he said, as he stepped to his comrade’s bunk and roused him, “Tom, we’re in luck. It’s blowing a gale outside. No dredging to-day. Hooray!”
Tom Edwards sat up, and groaned.
“Oh, but I’m lame,” he said. “What with that tough day’s work, yesterday, and this confounded slatting about, I’m just about done for. Haley’ll kill us yet, if we don’t get away.”
Tom Edwards, erstwhile travelling man and frequenter of good hotels, stepped stiffly out on to the floor and proceeded to rub his arms and joints, to limber them up.
“Jack,” he said, “I’m sorry now that you didn’t take the chance up the river, that night, and swim for it. You’d have got away, and they’d be after us all by this time. Jack, I tell you, we’ve got to get out of here pretty soon, or there’ll be no Tom Edwards left to go anywhere. I can’t stand this much longer.”
Harvey stepped to the side of his friend, and whispered softly.
“Neither can I, Tom,” he answered, “and what’s more, I don’t intend to. We’ll get away. We’ll escape.”
To their surprise, the conversation was interrupted by the sharp call of the mate for them to hustle out and help get the bug-eye under weigh. They looked at each other in astonishment, for one moment. Then Harvey reassured his friend.
“It’s all right,” he said. “We can’t be going out. Haley wants a snugger berth. We’re getting too much of the sweep here.”