Chapter X: Blueskin’s Plot

The presence of the Aberstour Sea Scouts’ yacht _Kestrel_ in Dartmouth Harbour attracted a fair amount of interest, but none more than that shown by a tall, heavily built, and loose-jowled deck-hand on board the S.S. _Lumberjack_.

Leaning over the bulwark of the tramp and shading his face with his hands, the man gazed so intently at the newly arrived yacht that one of his shipmates was struck by his studied interest.

“Lor’, Blueskin!” he exclaimed. “Wot’s strikin’ your fancy now? Ain’t you never seen a crowd o’ Sea Scoutses afore?”

Carlo Bone spat contemptuously into the scuppers.

“Axin’ for trouble, them is,” he remarked.

“An’ so’ll you be if the Old Man sees you hangin’ on to the slack,” rejoined the other. “Bear a hand an’ help shift this ’ere dunnage.”

The S.S. _Lumberjack_ was lying within a hundred yards of the mooring which the _Kestrel_ had picked up. She had arrived a few days before, having developed engine trouble in that antiquated box which required all the skill and patience of a dour Scots engineer to take the old tramp along at even a modest five knots.

The sight of the _Kestrel_ acted like a red rag to a mad bull as far as Blueskin Bone was concerned. The mere knowledge that had it not been for “them Sea Scoutses” he might have become the owner of the craft never ceased to anger him. Even when, acting upon the idea that Polkebo was getting too hot for him, he had shipped aboard the S.S. _Lumberjack_ his resentment did not die down; it merely smouldered, to be revived to white heat when, quite unexpectedly, the _Kestrel_ came in with the flood tide from the boisterous waters of the English Channel.

“If she ain’t mine,” he muttered, “she won’t be nobody’s—not if I can ’elp it. Too mighty cute those chaps wur last time—when they thought as I wur about. If they don’t see I, maybe they won’t be so plaguey wideawake.”

For the rest of his watch Blueskin spent most of the time taking furtive glances at the _Kestrel_ and cudgelling his brains to devise some cunning plan to gain his ends. In order to conceal himself from observation from the _Kestrel_, he even declined to go ashore that evening, much to his shipmates’ surprise.

Long after the hands had turned in that night Blueskin lay awake. When at length silence reigned in the stuffy fo’c’sle of the S.S. _Lumberjack_, Carlo Bone slipped out of his bunk, barefooted and wearing only a pair of canvas trousers.

It was a pitch dark night. Heavy clouds overspread the sky. A hard blow was raging out in the Channel, and even the land-locked waters of Dartmouth Harbour were foam-flecked. The flood tide was on the point of turning. In fact, all the shipping at anchor on the Kingswear side were riding head to wind. Eighty yards or so away, the riding-light of the _Kestrel_ see-sawed as the yacht rolled and strained at her borrowed moorings.

Groping about in the darkness, Blueskin soon found what he wanted: an iron bucket to which he had previously attached a short length of flexible steel wire. The bucket he lowered over the ship’s side by means of a piece of spun yarn until it hung just above the surface.

Giving a final look round to reassure himself that no one was on deck, Blueskin lowered himself into the water. Then, casting off the lashing that held the bucket, he struck out for the _Kestrel_, pushing the bucket in front of him.

Like most Cornishmen, Blueskin Bone was a powerful swimmer, and an expert diver. It was mere child’s-play to him to swim to the yacht’s stern, partly fill the bucket to make it float upright, and then to dive with the free end of the flexible wire in his grasp.

Blueskin had seen the _Kestrel_ high and dry so often that he was well acquainted with the way in which her rudder fastenings were fixed. In the darkness the task he had in hand presented no difficulty. Quickly he passed the end of the wire between the rudder and the stern-post just above the lower pintle, and came to the surface with the steel rope still in his hand.

His next act was to bend the end of the wire to the handle of the bucket, so that both extremities were secured close together. The bucket was now firmly attached to the _Kestrel’s_ rudder by the doubled parts of the wire.

“That’ll ’old till the crows come ’ome,” he muttered, as he tugged at the last hitch of the rope.

Tilting the bucket, Blueskin allowed it to fill and sink. It was now suspended at the end of a few feet of steel wire immediately under the yacht’s stern-post.

Having accomplished what he had set out to do, Carlo Bone swam back to the _Lumberjack_, swarmed up her side, removed and wrung out his trousers, and crept back to his bunk.

“Reckon I ain’t cried quits wi’ ’em yet,” he muttered, recalling with mingled feelings of humiliation and anger the incident when he was knocked out by a mere youth. “’Tany rate, I’ve done summat t’wards gettin’ my own back. Like as not them’ll have a leadin’ wind outer ’ere when them starts. An’ a fair tide. But when it comes tu goin’ about like in the Range, that there bucket’ll make ’em miss stays. They’ll be fair on the rocks afore they knows where they be.”

There was deep cunning in Carlo Bone’s plan. He counted upon the _Kestrel_ getting under way with a fair wind and a fair tide. The crew would not be likely to notice that they were towing a bucket under the stern, although the drag would be considerable. But in the Narrows, at the entrance to the harbour, the baffling wind and the set of the tidal current would compel the _Kestrel_ to attempt at least one tack. Then the impediment caused by the bucket would be more than sufficient to make her “miss stays,” and in that hopeless state she would be driven upon the saw-edged rocks to lee’ard almost before her crew realised their danger.

Chuckling sardonically, Blueskin lay awake in his bunk until nearly dawn—the dawn of a day on which, if his plans went aright, the _Kestrel_ would ignominiously end her career upon the rock-strewn coast of Devon.