"Disappointed? 'Course not. He isn't buying a yacht. Old hulks are what he always buys for hauling stone. He'll have her hull fixed up and she'll do well enough for a barge."
Across the harbor over the Herringbone a sandy strip of land running parallel to the Howesport waterfront and sheltering the outer harbor, the sun had set, only the rim of its globe now peering above the horizon. The decaying old fish piers on both sides of Robbins Wharf loomed hoary, deserted and sinister, ghosts of palmier days. Not a sound broke the silence save the squawk of a passing gull and the wash of the sea on the sides of the schooner.
Captain Blackmer still stood with a Napoleonic pose, looking out toward the vanishing sun.
"If 'twa'n't for the Widder Barnes," he remarked when its last radiance had faded and night shrouded the after-glow, "I'd be tempted to sail out and scuttle that whole Crosby fleet."
"And why stop because of the Widow Barnes?" asked Bill, suddenly interested. "I'm game to do it. I don't want to see you done out of business by that Crosby outfit. Jobs are scarce, and I'm quite satisfied with this one. Will you give me leave to dispose of those schooners for you?"
"Why, of course not! I just—was thinkin'—how anybody might do it—that's all."
"It would be easy as——"
"Let's drop the subject. Come on aboard the Mary, Bill."
But the thought of striking underhandedly at the Crosby fleet was planted in Captain Bert's brain. The schooners had all been towed to Howesport from the shipyards by tugboats. It was doubtful whether their crews were yet organized; probably only a few men kept watch on the vessels while they lay in the Cowyard waiting for the Crosby Company to begin shipping operations.
"I've knocked around the water long enough to know that a new company like this Crosby outfit has fired all its ammunition in its opening shot," insisted Bill, while they prepared the Mary Chilton for clearing Robbins Wharf. "Who ever heard of a new company in coastwise shipping starting out bang with six vessels? Two would be a plenty, for an opener. And they're all brand new two-masters, too. Must have cost a bunch of money. Cap'n, if we dispose of those schooners somehow, the Crosby Company is dead."