There was a long moment before comprehension dawned on the Russian sailors. Suddenly a man shouted hoarsely at them and running aft began to wave his hands wildly at the schooner which was bearing down as if to ram. “Steady on!” LaBarge walked away from the rail and stood, his big hands on his hips, watching the narrowing gap. Kohl stared at him. To have seen LaBarge at this moment no man would have guessed that he was gambling his ship, their lives, and at the very least a Russian prison. Kohl could not know that LaBarge’s throat was so dry he could not swallow, and his heart was throbbing heavily. Had he kicked an ant’s nest there could have been no greater burst of activity than there now was aboard the Russian. Men shouted and waved their arms to warn him off, but the Susquehanna plunged on. “Gant! Boyar! Get forward and stand by with your rifles. If anybody lays a hand on the wheel, drop him where he stands!”
It was close. If anyone touched the wheel on the Russian bark it might be just enough to close off the channel and bring about the collision they feared. The water gap narrowed. A hundred yards … seventy … fifty! A man standing at the bulwark suddenly ran to the bow and dove off into the black water, swimming wildly for shore. Lights appeared in doorways and people rushed out, shouting and staring seaward.
Kohl’s eyes were riveted on the narrowing distance. “Cap’n!” he pleaded.
The moment seemed to stand still as the schooner closed that distance.
Forty-five … forty …
“Hard aport!” LaBarge shouted. His mouth was so dry his voice sounded choked.
“Hard over! Hard!”
Kohl swung the spokes and Turk jumped to lend a hand. Jean stood with his legs spread, watching the bow of the schooner swing. He had drawn the line very fine indeed, perhaps too fine. But he knew his ship, and the Susquehanna answered smartly to her wheel, answered as if she understood what her master wanted. The bow began to swing faster. Jean chewed on the stick of a match and watched the narrowing space.
Thirty yards … twenty-five … twenty … fifteen. The schooner was forging ahead now, but still swinging. She was … she was going to clear. Suddenly added wind filled her sails and she gathered speed, slipping past the stern of the moored ship with less than ten feet to spare. Close off the port side were the off-lying rocks, but the Susquehanna slipped through and lifted her bows proudly to the seas. “All sail!” LaBarge shouted the command and then walked forward alone so they could not see his hands trembling. He had, in that moment, risked everything. If the wind had fallen the least bit, if the schooner had yawed … but she had come through like a thoroughbred.
He turned, after a moment, and walked aft. They were not yet free. If Zinnovy knew they had started and had slipped out of the harbor he might sail north and round Japonski Island to cut them off. Only, it was dark, and while the night lasted there was still a chance.
“Barney.” LaBarge stopped beside Kohl, who had turned the wheel over to Larsen.
“You told me you once took a boat through Neva Strait.” Kohl was still sweating out the near collision. “But that was in broad daylight!” he protested.
Jean grinned at him. “Next time you see the crowd at the Merchant’s Exchange,” he told him, “you can tell them you’re the only man alive who ever took a schooner through Neva Strait in the dark!”
23
Helena, wrapped in a dark cloak, returned to the deck. She had stood by during part of the escape operation, and now she, listened to comments of the crew. This ship, she realized, was operated as though every man aboard had a real share in its success. Rolling along under a good head of sail with a following wind, the crew stood by, alert for whatever might come. “Neva Strait,” Kohl was explaining patiently, “is four miles of pure hell in the daytime. The Whitestone Narrows are maybe forty yards wide, possibly less. In the daylight the dangers are marked by kelp, and some of the rocks are awash. At night you can’t see anything.”
LaBarge knew that Kohl’s first instinct when danger threatened the ship was to hesitate, to object to the risk. His second instinct was to weigh their chances and if the situation warranted it, to go along with the risk. “And if we get through? What then?”
“Peril Strait around the end of the island, and once in the sound on the other side, we sail north.”
“One thing I’ll say,” Kohl grumbled, “you’ve got guts.”
“A good ship and a good crew,” LaBarge added.
Together he and Helena walked to the waist, where a little spray was breaking over the gunwale, and it tasted salt on their lips. They were silent together, listening to the bow-wash about the hull, the whining of wind in the rigging, and the straining of the schooner against sea arid wind. These were sounds of the sea, the sounds a man remembers when he lies awake at night on shore, and hears in his blood, feels deep in the convolutions of his brain, the sounds that have taken men back to the sea for these thousands of years. The winds that whispered in the rigging had blown long over the icy steppes and the cold Arctic plains, and over empty, lonely, unknown seas that lay gray under gray clouds. Neither of them could avoid the realization that if all went well they would be together for months on end. Now, for the first time, they knew they were definitely committed to a long journey together. As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they could watch the whitecaps on the dark, glasslike waves, and see the darker, unknown shores that rose abruptly from the water’s edge. “You seemed very calm.”
“I wasn’t,” Jean admitted, “I was scared.”
“This story I must tell to my uncle. He will enjoy it.” She changed the subject.
“The Neva Strait … it is bad?”
“Did you ever walk down a dark hallway in a strange house, a hallway scattered at random with chairs? It will be like that.”
“You leave it to the mate?”
“I’d better … he’s twice the sailor I am. Don’t be fooled by that business back there: I was gambling that they wouldn’t think I’d take such a risk. Also, I’ve a good ship and a good crew, and I knew they would be ready for anything that might happen. For day-to-day sailing Kohl is much better than I am.” They were silent, watching the water. Helena knew that Zinnovy had gone so far now that withdrawal was impossible. Although the shooting of Rotcheff could not be proved, if she reached the Czar his position would be at least endangered and might be finished. It was always easier to explain a disappearance than to escape consequences of crime when confronted by a witness. Yet the longer Zinnovy pursued the schooner the better Rotcheff’s chances of recovery without hindrance, and Rotcheff would be in touch with Busch. The merchant had as many fighting men as Zinnovy himself and would be no more reluctant to use them. Long after Helena went below, Jean remained on deck. He walked forward to where Boyar stood lookout in the bow. “You have crossed Siberia, Boyar? How long would it require?”
“Who can say? Three months? Or three years? It is a long trip, nearly six thousand of miles, and the roads are bad, the troikas miserable, the people indifferent or criminal.”
Three months … they could scarcely hope to make it faster even though she was a niece of the Czar. To secure an escort they must appeal to the very people they wished to avoid. The headquarters of the Russian American Company was in Siberia, and many of the officials were actually in the pay of the Company. The shores slipped by in darkness. It gave him an eerie feeling to be sliding into these narrow channels, uncharted and largely unknown. How many men might already have lost their lives here, unrecorded by history? Captain Cook had been here, and the Spanish before that, and the Russian ships. The first Russians who had come to these islands had vanished. There was a story in the Tlingit villages that a chief covered with a bearskin had enticed them into the woods and into an ambush. A second boat sent ashore to find the first vanished in the same way. Their ship had waited and waited, then finally sailed away. But Chinese and Japanese fishing boats had been carried to this coast, and some of their crews might have survived. What strange lives they must then have led, with no hope of return to their homes.