CHAPTER III.
The Chase of the “Dido.”
REUBE uttered a cry of something like despair.
“Now, old man, what’s the matter with you?” queried Will, reprovingly. “Do you suppose the Dido’s gone? Why, you old chump, we’ll take one of the other boats and go after her. With this wind we’ll catch her before she goes half a dozen miles. She won’t get past the Joggins, anyway, I’ll bet you a red herring!”
Reube’s face brightened, beamed broadly, and resumed its old boyish frankness.
“Why, that’s so!” said he. “That’s just what we’ll do. What a perfect fool I’d be sometimes, Will, if you didn’t keep an eye on me!”
That half a mile across the marsh proved a long one owing to the many detours which our runners, now trotting slowly and deliberately, were forced to make by the windings of the full creek. At last they reached the landing place where the Dido had been moored. About the rickety old wharf stood four or five high reels, skeletons of light gray wood wound with the dark-stained folds of the shad nets. The fishing season was right at hand, but had not yet begun. Around the boats and the reels were many half-obliterated footprints, left by the feet of those who had been winding the nets and pitching the seams of the boats. Of fresh tracks there was but one set—the tracks of someone with long, narrow feet, who walked without turning out his toes. To these tracks Reube pointed with grim significance of gesture.
“Yes,” said Will, “I understand. Did you ever see a plainer signature than Mart Gandy makes with his feet?”
The smallest of the fishing boats at the wharf was a light “pinkie”—a name given by the Tantramar fishermen to a special kind of craft with the stern pointed like the stem. The pinkie, painted red and white instead of blackened with tar like the other boats, was a good sailer. She belonged to Barnes, the owner of the red bull; and to Reube’s judicial mind it seemed appropriate that she should be taken without leave. There was a further inducement in the fact that she could be got afloat more easily than any of the other boats. The tide had fallen so that her keel was high and dry; and the fine mud of Tantramar gripped it with astonishing tenacity. But after a few minutes of such straining as made the veins stand out on Will’s forehead, and brought a redness about Reube’s steel-gray eyes, she was afloat.