“We’re movin’!” Pete Noble whispered hoarsely. “Look at them lights!” Astern of them, almost fifty yards off, were the lights that simulated the schooner. They were moving but the movement was desperately slow and at any moment some drunken sailor aboard the Lena might realize something was wrong. The crew stood in silence, almost afraid to breathe, wondering what a Russian prison would be like.
“Channel Rock ahead, Cap’n. Shall I shake out the jib?”
“Hold it.”
The minutes walked by on cat feet. A star appeared through a veil of cloud, then was quickly banished behind a dark mass of rolled black-cotton cloud. The patrol ship was well astern now. Somewhere ashore and far off, a dog barked. Channel Rock was abeam. “All right, Barney,” Jean said, and watched the white flag of the jib shake out and fill itself with the light breeze. “Stand by the mizzen,” he said, after a minute. Channel Rock fell astern and the dark bulk of Battery Island loomed on the port side, yet they were still far from free. There was no more time. “All right, Barney. Get some sail on her!” Smartly the mizzen was hauled aloft, then the mains’l. The Susquehanna gathered speed. Out from behind Japonski Island the wind filled her sails and she heeled over and began to dip her bows deeper. With luck they would soon have a full cargo and a ticket home.
“Sail, ho!” The call, from the lookout in the bow, was low and desperate. Jumping to the bulwark, Jean strained his eyes into the darkness. A big square-rigger was coming up the Western Channel, headed into port under a full head of sail, although even as they sighted her she began to take in canvas. Barney swore. “Look at that, would you?”
“I’m looking.”
She was bearing down upon them and coming fast The man at the wheel turned and glanced at Jean but LaBarge shook his head. To change course now would be to lose distance they could not afford, yet the big windjammer was headed as if to run them down.
“Cap’n!” The man at the wheel had a pleading note in his voice.
“Hold your course!”
Kohl drew a sharp breath and looked up at the towering heights of canvas. Before he could speak he was interrupted by a shout from the square-rigger and a command to put the wheel over. The big ship sheered off and a man ran shouting to the rail. A dozen faces joined him, peering over the side of the schooner. A rough voice hailed them. “What ship is that? Who are you?” The hail was in Russian, then in English. LaBarge ignored the shouts and then suddenly, in the white light from a scuttle, he saw a face, and it was the face he could never forget, that would always be with him. There it was, not more than heaving-line distance away, and for a moment as the two ships passed their eyes met across the space, and then as they drew apart, he lifted a hand. She hesitated, then waved back, a vague, sad gesture in the night, and then the square-rigger fell astern and there was no sound, no light, and only a memory of a white face lonely in the light from an open scuttle, and the memory of a girl who had ridden beside him over the tawny, sunlit hills. The schooner dipped her bow and spray swept the deck. On the wind there was a smell of open sea and of the far-off pine-clad islands to the north, those far green islands where the schooner was bound.
17
Within a very short time Baron Zinnovy would realize that despite all his efforts the wheat had been delivered, and he would know that LaBarge and the Susquehanna were at large in the Alexander Archipelago. The immediate problem was obvious. They must be where the patrol ship was not, they must pick up the cargo of furs as planned, and slip away to the south at the first opportunity thereafter.
The schooner carried eighteen men and three officers, all carefully selected men. A third of the number could have handled her, but the others were needed for trading, fighting, or any move LaBarge might make ashore. “We’re pointing for Cross Sound. Do you know it, Kohl?” “As well as any man, which means nothing. I know there’s glaciers north of it that keep feeding ice into the Sound, and there are bad fogs.” “Do you know a small cove with an island in its mouth? It’s on the north coast of Chichagof?”
“That’s old Skayeut’s village.”
“All right. Take us there.”
Jean walked forward to the waist. There were no sails in sight and they could expect a few hours’ grace. With the following wind they could make good time and farther north they could hug the coast. The wind was cold now, the sea choppy. From now on they would need luck, ingenuity, and every bit of their combined knowledge. Fortunately, the schooner was new, she could sail close to the wind and could carry canvas.
The shores of the island, when they reached it, were heavily wooded right to the water’s edge. Here and there a small indentation, each with a minute section of beach, broke the monotony of the forest-clad shore. The morning was bright and the day cold. Taking the schooner in past the George Islands they reached toward the cove, seeing no sign of life except a lone tern floating comfortably on the gray sea.
“The entrance is narrow,” Kohl advised, “right abeam of the island.” It opened before them as he spoke and he conned the schooner into the opening between island and shore. Trees came down to the water and there was a fringe of ice along the shore. Inland, over the trees, they detected a column of smoke. “This Skayeut,” Kohl said, “he’s a mean old blister.”
“Can we go on in?”
“The passage is narrow, and there’s only three feet of water over the rocks at low tide, but you could make it at high tide, and inside it’s deep enough.” “We’ll stay here.”
Two canoes put out from shore and circled the Susquehanna just within hailing distance. There were four men in one canoe, two in the other, but no movement showed on the shore, although all knew Indians were there, studying the schooner. These Indians had suffered too much from the greed and rapacity of the Russians.
The dark green walls of the forest closed them in, and the schooner lay like a ship in a dream on the still, cold water. There was a faint slap of paddles on water as the canoes circled closer. The Indians stopped rowing. “Where’s Skayeut?” Kohl shouted.
The Tlingits said nothing. The schooner was new in these waters. One Indian shaded his eyes to stare at Kohl. “You Boston men?” “Sure! Come aboard!”
They hung off, reluctant to risk it. One of the Tlingits indicated LaBarge. “Who that?” he called.
“LaBarge!” Jean called back. “You tell Skayeut that Jean LaBarge has come to see him!”
The paddles dipped deep and the canoe shot shoreward. Two of the men in the larger canoe turned to stare at LaBarge and Kohl turned to his captain. “They acted like they knew your name.”
“They know it,” Jean replied blandly, enjoying Kohl’s mystified expression. “He knew me, Barney.”
Just before noon a half dozen bidarkas shot out from shore, each packed with Indians. In the first was Skayeut, a tall man with a wide, deep chest and massive bones. He thrust out his hand to Jean and they looked into each other’s eyes, and then they both smiled.
Trade was brisk. The Tlingit Indians were born traders. Even before the arrival of Captain Cook they knew the value of the land trade routes and their economic value to the tribe. At one time the tribe had traveled three hundred miles to stop the establishment of a Hudson Bay post where it would interfere with their own trade with tribes from the interior.
Of this Jean knew, and that old Skayeut could give him information about the interior. The old chieftain was about to learn that information itself could be a valuable item of trade.
For three nights they remained at Elfin Cove, and each night LaBarge noted down the results of his talks with the old chief and the procession of Tlingits and Salish the chief brought to talk of Alaska. Later, alone in his cabin, Jean noted down what he had heard for future reference.
… the gold is known to the Russians. An effort was made to mine it without success and for some reason further attempts were discouraged, probably they did not wish to attract attention to a territory so insecure in a military sense. Old Skayeut knows where more gold can be had and will trade for iron. The iron here is in small deposits and difficult for the Tlingits to work. They are a superior people and the blankets they weave of dog hair or cedar bark are equal to the best, anywhere.