Chapter XV

Almost at once Captain Skinner recognized the approaching ship as the _Queen_, one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fleet and plainly in her rights. Barabara Point and all of the Alaskan mainland north to Cape Spencer was, by right of the treaty of 1839, the great English company’s trading ground. Skinner noticed also that she was a high-speed ship compared to his own safe and steady schooner; and it might be that this observation was a factor in his subsequent conduct. While it was true that from time to time he had been known to run a race, he firmly decided that such conduct would now be extremely discourteous to the British captain. Like an honest man with nothing in particular to do, he steamed out until he was some three miles offshore, and headed into the sea with just enough power to hold his own against the tide, waiting for what might befall.

At length the _Queen_ drew up in easy shouting distance, and she too headed into the tide. So far as Jeff could see, Captain Skinner was not even watching her maneuvers. He leaned comfortably on the rail of his bridge, smoking peacefully and making weather predictions for the next day. It was not until the stranger captain began to shout through his megaphone that the old Yankee showed any knowledge of his presence.

“Who are you and where bound?” the _Queen’s_ master called. His angry tone indicated any one of several things, perhaps that complications had risen in what had seemed to be a very simple, expeditious, and not to mention profitable affair, perhaps merely that Skinner’s air of calm and indifference had grated unpleasantly upon him.

“Schooner _Ethan Allen_, American registry, bound for Sitka,” was Captain Skinner’s reply. He spoke, so he thought, very softly; yet the Englishman seemed to understand clearly. “Who are you?”

“Captain Lennox, of Hudson’s Bay _Queen_. You took some of the cargo off the _Boston Dame_, didn’t you?”

“Yep. All what was any good.”

“We want to see the papers showing that stuff isn’t contraband. Heave to, we’re coming aboard.”

Captain Skinner took his pipe from his mouth. It is a regrettable fact that he spat—seemingly with no shame—smack into the sea. “Who’s coming aboard?” he asked.

He was speaking quite softly now; and there followed a curious rustle and stir among the men of his crew. They began to think that there might be something to this business, after all. When the captain used such a tone of voice it was usually indicative of impending action, often of a disagreeable sort.

“Myself and some of my men,” was the answer. The decisiveness of his tone could not be mistaken. Decisiveness is a British quality that Skinner thoroughly respected; and now he watched like an eagle the activities on the deck of the _Queen_.

Captain Lennox evidently wished to make good time rowing across. No less than twelve oarsmen preceded him into the longboat. Skinner waited very patiently until they had pushed off, and until the morning light glittered on certain instruments leaning in easy reach of their hands. The crew of the _Queen_ was plainly prepared for an argument. Each man carried a carbine and, in case the debate waxed hot, a broad saber, that time-honored and most effective argument at close range.

At this point Captain Skinner gave certain commands, in a voice not to be misunderstood. He was not posing now. His men leaped to obey, in a moment reappearing on the deck with every piece of armament that the ship’s chest contained. They were told to load their rifles and line up at the railing to await commands.

Skinner gave just one of his valuable minutes to Jeff. “Go down and get your rifle, Sharp, if you’ve got one,” he said. “It looks to me like war. If you ain’t got a gun, get one of those down there and line up with the others.”

Jeff straightened, looking the skipper in the eyes. “You can’t do that, you know,” he objected.

“I can’t, huh? Wait and see.”

“Those people are probably in their rights.”

“I’m in my rights, too. This is an American ship. No armed force is going to board her on the high seas. One war was fought on that point once before. A proud gent like yourself would look fine in irons, down below, while the ship went to London with a prize crew!”

The approaching boat was in fair rifle range by now, and again Skinner put his megaphone to his lips. “If you want to see my papers, go back and leave those weapons on your deck,” he called. “You can’t come alongside with that armed force.”

Across the water they heard Captain Lennox speaking quietly to his men; and for a moment they rested on their oars. “We’re not afraid of smugglers,” was the reply. “We’re coming alongside and we’re coming aboard.”

Captain Skinner addressed no further words to them. He turned to his crew and gave certain instructions. His men were to stand ready with their rifles, and when the longboat was approximately sixty yards distant Captain Skinner would command the first volley. Thereafter they were to fire at will. From their higher position, and being the kind of riflemen who habitually pick their targets instead of shooting in the enemy’s general direction, it seemed probable they could inflict numerous casualties. Since Skinner was no longer careful to lower his voice, it was likely that his orders were overheard.

When he stopped speaking an ominous silence enveloped all. To Jeff, standing immediately behind the captain and wondering at his own strange thoughts, there seemed a valiancy in this water vista, a moving appeal beyond his immediate analysis. He could not look at it coolly. His firmest beliefs were powerless to annul it; and his old gods of scorn and hatred could not shut it out of his heart. Beyond the blue of the ocean he could see the forest, blue-black under thin October clouds. He saw the _Boston Dame_, like a ghost ship, in the harbor, then standing nearer, the _Queen_, one of England’s far-sailing fleet. This side of her lay the longboat, a most vivid picture as she rolled easily on the swell and as her brave crew waited for their captain’s command. Their carbines and their bright sabers made miniature lightning flashes as the steel reflected the almost hidden sun. On the deck of the _Ethan Allen_ waited the Americans, humble men, most of them, but no less brave than the men in the longboat—all of them ready to risk death at a leader’s command and for an old theme they did not begin to understand.

There would not be much more waiting. This was the pause before the storm; and it could only endure a few seconds more. The affair was rapidly reaching a crisis; and indeed, it was only the reluctance of either side to take the offensive that had prevented bloodshed so far. Both captains realized the possible far-reaching consequences of such an encounter and therefore hesitated to give the command to fire.

“We’re going to board you,” Lennox called. “If you fire on us, you do it at your own risk.”

“On our risk let it be!” was Captain Skinner’s answer. His voice was not without dignity, and indeed it had a deep, sober tone of one who is sure of his course in a moment of great trial, such a tone as has been heard now and then in council chambers when men responsible for tribes and nations have come to far-reaching decisions. “If you come nearer, we’ll open fire.”

Jeff knew, just as the British captain knew, that Skinner meant what he said. This was no idle threat; and now there seemed no further hope of peace. Every alternate man of the longboat’s crew had now picked up his rifle, holding it ready to aim and fire when Captain Lennox gave the word. His tactics were now plain: half his crew would keep the enemy engaged while the other half rowed alongside, whereupon his entire force would attempt to board. On the deck of the _Ethan Allen_ was heard the grim sound of the cocking of rifles.

In another moment, it seemed, the first volley would ring out over the hushed sea; and how many souls would fly and how many women weep before its far-carrying echoes had died away, no man could dream. At this range there were certain to be heavy casualties on each side, even though the battle stopped immediately thereafter. And if there ever was a vain dream of foolish men it was that any great question can be decided with a single volley. In a calmer hour Jeff would have remembered that at the beginning of the Rebellion each side had been sure of early victory; his people had believed that Bull Run would end the war. Had the leaders been able to foresee the four red years to come, he believed that both armies would have withdrawn without firing a shot.

But Jeff could not remember such things now. The deathless curse which must have been laid upon the race when Cain slew Abel once more fell upon him, and in the ardor of this moment memory dried up in him as fallen apples dry under the ardent sun. An old, tragic zeal swept over him once more.

Could he remember all the things he had held dear? Could he as much as recall the theme to which he had consecrated his life? Is man no more than a leaf to be blown in the wind of a savage emotion that blows out of the savage years? The men in the longboat were Englishmen, and England had been his friend. They were of a great nation that he believed in far more than in the government of which he was a subject; and indeed they were a brave and a great people. The men here on the deck with him were all of the Northern States, and doubtless many of them had actually borne arms against the South. In a more sane hour he could have held to his firm conviction that they were not his people, that they stood for the things he hated, and had nothing in common with him. Most of all he would have remembered that the flag which Captain Skinner had run up was the hated Stars and Stripes, the banner under which he had never thought to walk, much less to fight.

He was aware of no sharp distinction between right and wrong. Probably the British captain felt justified in attempting to board, with an armed guard, a possible smuggler; certainly Captain Skinner believed in the inviolacy of his deck. As it was in this little dispute, so had it been in the great Civil War: no one on this lowly earth knew exactly which side was in the right and which in the wrong. It is part of the old curse that in hours like these all abstract thought is clouded, and men know neither right nor wrong: they may only follow the blind dictates of their hearts. In this stirring moment, as the October clouds darkened above as if they were the lowering wings of death—in this momentary hush before the rifles spoke—Jeff’s heart led him into a strange, unexpected course.

At first the impulse was vague, but as the tension increased and the crisis neared, the dim urge became an immutable command. It grew within him as the low whistle of the wind’s breath grows to a yelling climax, as the long gusts sweep through the trees. Yet not until he heard his own answer to Skinner’s question did he know his own mind.

“Open fire if they raise their rifles to their shoulders,” he had just ordered his men. Turning, he looked Jeff full in the face. “You haven’t your rifle that I told you to get.”

“No, I haven’t got it,” Jeff answered. He spoke in a low monotone, in the voice of one overcome with wonder.

“Are you going to get it? Sharp, are you with us or against us?”

At these words, and at his answer, a lightning flash seemed to illumine Jeff’s sky and sea and world. All at once he saw clear and far. The time might come when the light would dim and die, when bitterness and hatred would shadow him again, but now he knew the way.

“I’m with _you_, Captain Skinner!” he cried. And he banged a heavy fist on the railing of the bridge.