"Because they were short-handed now upon the tug, and also because consultation was necessary over what was to be done, the young owner of the Miwaka, Captain Stafford, came down the hawser onto the tug after the line had been put straight. He came to the wheelhouse, where Benjamin Corvet was, and they consulted. Then Benjamin Corvet learned that the other owner was aboard the new ship as well—Ramsdell—the man whose money you have just told me had built this and was soon to build other ships. I did not understand before why learning that affected him so much.
"'Stafford wanted us' (this is what Benjamin Corvet said) 'to tow him up the lake; I would not do that, but I agreed to tow him to Manistique. The night was dark, Father—no snow, but frightful wind which had been increasing until it now sent the waves washing clear across the tug. We had gone north an hour when, low upon the water to my right, I saw a light, and there came to me the whistling of a buoy which told me that we were passing nearer than I would have wished, even in daytime, to windward of Boulder Reef. There are, Father, no people on that reef; its sides of ragged rock go straight down forty fathoms into the lake.
"'I looked at the man with me in the wheelhouse—at Stafford—and hated him! I put my head out at the wheelhouse door and looked back at the lights at the new, great steamer, following safe and straight at the end of its towline. I thought of my two men upon the tug who had been crushed by clumsiness of those on board that ship; and how my own ships had had a name for never losing a man and that name would be lost now because of the carelessness of Stafford's men! And the sound of the shoal brought the evil thought to me. Suppose I had not happened across his ship; would it have gone upon some reef like this and been lost? I thought that if now the hawser should break, I would be rid of that ship and perhaps of the owner who was on board as well. We could not pick up the tow line again so close to the reef. The steamer would drift down upon the rocks—'"
Father Perron hesitated an instant. "I bear witness," he said solemnly, "that Benjamin Corvet assured me—his priest—that it was only a thought; the evil act which it suggested was something which he would not do or even think of doing. But he spoke something of what was in his mind to Stafford, for he said:
"'I must look like a fool to you to keep on towing your ship!'
"They stared, he told me, into one another's eyes, and Stafford grew uneasy.
"'We'd have been all right,' he answered, 'until we had got help, if you'd left us where we were!' He too listened to the sound of the buoy and of the water dashing on the shoal. 'You are taking us too close,' he said—'too close!' He went aft then to look at the tow line."
Father Perron's voice ceased; what he had to tell now made his face whiten as he arranged it in his memory. Alan leaned forward a little and then, with an effort, sat straight. Constance turned and gazed at him; but he dared not look at her. He felt her hand warm upon his; it rested there a moment and moved away.
"There was a third man in the wheelhouse when these things were spoken," Father Perron said, "the mate of the ship which had been laid up at Manistee."
"Henry Spearman," Sherrill supplied.