At nine we embarked, the Celebrity and Mr. Trevor for the same reason
that the animals took to the ark,--because they had to. There was a
spanking breeze in the west-northwest, and a clear sky, a day of days
for a sail. Mr. Cooke produced a map, which Farrar and I consulted, and
without much trouble we hit upon a quiet place to land on the Canadian
side. Our course was north-northwest, and therefore the wind enabled us
to hold it without much trouble. Bear Island is situated some eighteen
miles from shore, and about equidistant between Asquith and Far Harbor,
which latter we had to pass on our way northward.
Although a brisk sea was on, the wind had been steady from that quarter
all night, and the motion was uniform. The Maria was an excellent
sea-boat. There was no indication, therefore, of the return of that
malady which had been so prevalent on the passage to Bear Island. Mr.
Cooke had never felt better, and looked every inch a sea-captain in his
natty yachting-suit. He had acquired a tan on the island; and, as is
eminently proper on a boat, he affected nautical manners and nautical
ways. But his vernacular savored so hopelessly of the track and stall
that he had been able to acquire no mastery over the art of marine
invective. And he possessed not so much as one maritime oath. As soon as
we had swung clear of the cove he made for the weather stays, where
he assumed a posture not unlike that in the famous picture of Farragut
ascending Mobile Bay. His leather case was swung over his shoulder, and
with his glasses he swept the lake in search of the Scimitar and other
vessels of a like unamiable character.
Although my client could have told you, offhand, Jackstraw's last mile
in a bicycle sulky, his notion of the Scimitar's speed was as vague
as his knowledge of seamanship. And when I informed him that in all
probability she had already passed the light on Far Harbor reef, some
nine miles this side of the Far Harbor police station, he went into
an inordinate state of excitement. Mr. Cooke was, indeed, that day the
embodiment of an unselfish if misdirected zeal. He was following the
dictates of both heart and conscience in his endeavor to rescue his
guest from the law; and true zeal is invariably contagious. What but
such could have commanded the unremitting labors of that morning? Farrar
himself had done three men's work before breakfast, and it was, in great
part, owing to him that we were now leaving the island behind us. He was
sailing the Maria that day as she will never be sailed again: her lee
gunwale awash, and a wake like a surveyor's line behind her. More than
once I called to mind his facetious observation about Mr. Drew, and
wondered if he knew more than he had said about the detective.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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