Chapter I

In the fleet of big coal schooners, which at this time were running from the middle Atlantic ports to Boston, the twin five-masters, the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_, were notable.

They were twins in everything: built from the one set of moulds in the one yard at the one time, launched together, rigged together, sailed on their maiden trips together, and were brought home with their first cargoes of coal together by two masters who were almost as twinlike to look at as their vessels.

It was the history of these two big schooners, that they seemed always to be wanting to get together. Their crews used to say of them that if left anchored at all near each other in the stream, they would start right away to swing toward each other. Even if it was slack water they would. Yes, sir.

I can't speak from personal knowledge of that tide-swinging trick, but I do know that I saw them a few hours after they had twice smashed into each other--once under sail off the Capes and once in tow up Boston Harbor; and it was not to be doubted that in both cases they had more than drifted into each other. And of their near-collisions! A day's loaf along the water-front would yield gossip of a dozen or more.

Now, these next few lines are from out of the sailors' book of gossip of mysterious happenings at sea; and it is true that the more sailorly the gossip, the more likely will it be to try to account for unusual accidents at sea in a natural way; and the most usual reason given is inefficiency--lack of seamanship. As to that, it is true that lack of seamanship or of sea instinct has accounted for many calamities at sea, and the same lack would probably account for many another not so set down on the public tablets; but lack of seamanship won't account for all the queer happenings at sea. Every now and then comes a ship which no earthly power seems able to keep up with. From out of our superior shore knowledge we may deduce that the builder or designer was in fault, that there must have been an asymmetry in her hull, or that her rigging lacked balance, such defects tending to render her uncontrollable under certain conditions. Maybe; but there she is, as she is, with the malign fates seeming to be working double tides to get her.

"Hoodoo ships," sailors term such, and "Hoo-doos, both of 'em," the crews of the collier fleet early labelled the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_. Yes, _sir_. And some day the pair of them were going up--or down--in a whirl of glory. If only they would smash only each other, and not go to putting poor innocent outsiders out of commission when they did go!--that was all they'd ask of _them_.

The master of the _Orion_ was Oliver Sickles; of the _Sirius_, Norman Sickles; and they were from the same little hamlet in that Cape Shore region whence come so many capable sailormen. Each was named for his father, and their fathers were brothers who hated each other and brought up their children to hate each other.

It was curious to see them--two master mariners commanding sister ships for the same owners--passing each other on the wharf, brushing elbows in the office, putting to sea time and time together, sailing, again and again, side by side for days together, and yet never seeming to see each other. Indifference was the word; but if by any chance a third person referred to one in the presence of the other in anything like complimentary terms, that third person was soon let to know that he wasn't making any hit with whichever Captain Sickles it was who had to listen. If it was Norman of the _Sirius_, he would shift his feet and start to stare intently at the ceiling or the sky; if it was Oliver of the _Orion_, with a snarl of disgust he would get up and walk off.

I had heard a lot of the Sickles cousins, but had never had more than a hailing acquaintance with either of them, until this early fall when my firm chartered, among others, the _Orion_ and the _Sirius_, and sent me down to Newport News to see that they lost no time in loading and getting out. It was the time of a threatened coal famine in New England, with coal freights up to two dollars a ton, and my firm chartering everything they could get hold of to take the coal from the railroads at Newport News and rush it east.

In our two new schooner captains, Norman and Oliver Sickles, I found, when I came to have dealings with them, a pair who knew their business. Implacable toward each other they surely were, but so long as their feelings weren't delaying their sailing days, that was their own business. Tall, broad, powerful chaps they both were, twenty-eight or thirty years of age to look at, slow in thought, heavy in action, but competent sailormen always. I had no need to know their records, nor to talk with them too many hours, to find that out. Not much about a schooner, be she two or five master, nor much about the North Atlantic coast, that they didn't know.

I had been three months in Newport News, Christmas was at hand, and the railroad people were telling me that they would have no more coal for my firm until after New Year's. There were twenty thousand tons not yet gone; but if my four four-master schooners could sail next morning, and the five-masters, _Orion_ and _Sirius_, get away the morning after, that twenty thousand tons would be cleaned up.

I hunted up the Captain Sickles of the _Sirius_ and put the question to him: "Captain Norman, if I can get you loaded and cleared by the morning after to-morrow, what's the chance of your making Boston by Christmas?" And he answered, after some thought: "It's a westerly wind with a medium glass to-day. It ought to hang on westerly and dry for another four or five days. Clear me by the morning after to-morrow, and I'll lay the _Sirius_ to anchor in Boston Harbor Christmas Eve, or"--he was a man of serious ways, and spoke most seriously now---"or I'll give you a good reason why."

I hunted up Captain Oliver Sickles of the _Orion_, and I found him having a drink in the bar of the Tidewater Café. He looked as if he'd welcome a quarrel, but that was nothing strange in him. I put the same question to him that I had put to his cousin, and the answer came in almost the same words as to the medium glass and the westerly wind, but at that point he looked sharply at me.

"And when does the _Sirius_ sail?" he asked.

"The morning after to-morrow."

"And"--suspiciously--"who first that morning, the _Sirius_ or me?"

"I don't know. You'll be loaded and cleared together--it's for yourselves to say who sails first."

"And what did he say?"

Captain Oliver had a hectoring way about him which used to make me promise myself that some day, after he'd done hauling coal for my outfit, I'd tell him what I thought of him. "What did who say?" I asked him now.

"Warn't you talkin' to my cousin awhile ago about the same thing?"

"I was, though I don't remember telling you about it."

"H-m," he sneered, "I thought so. Y' always go to him first."

"Yes, I do!" I snapped at him. "And why? Because he knows his mind. And he's a man to give an answer without using up an afternoon talking about it. He said he'd have the _Sirius_ to anchor in Boston Harbor by Christmas Eve or give me a good reason why."

"He did, did he? Then set this down in your log"--with the end of a prodigiously thick forefinger he was tapping the bar as he said it:--"The _Orion_ will be laying to anchor in Boston Harbor by Christmas Eve or there'll be a _damn_ good reason why."

Right here I should say that there was more than a rivalry of craftsmanship between the Sickles cousins. Once, thinking it was the _Sirius_, Norman Sickles's sweetheart, a very pretty and a very good girl, had gone aboard the _Orion_ as it lay in Boston Harbor. Oliver at once locked her in the cabin, put to sea, and carried her to Philadelphia, where, urged by her mother, and to save her good name as she thought, she married Oliver. But that her heart was still with Norman was current gossip in the fleet.

Because he had lately heard that I had been free-spoken in my comment on that exploit was why Captain Oliver now--his forefinger tapping the bar and he eying me from under his hat-brim--added to his "good reason" the word that, no matter what my firm or any other firm thought of this or that, which warn't none o' their business anyway, he wanted 'em all to understand that he was as capable of getting a quick passage out of a vessel as any Norman Sickles that ever walked; which gave me a fine chance to say: "Well, the place to prove that is at sea, and not in a barroom ashore."

Not very delicate--no; but it sent him almost on the run down aboard his vessel, to clear his decks for loading, which was mostly what I was after.

And I let it leak out--the answer of the two cousins about being in Boston before Christmas. A little rivalry of that kind doesn't do any harm; and I wanted to walk into the office on Christmas Eve and say, "The last of that Newport News coal is lying out there in the stream waiting to dock," and then go home, even as many of the crews would want to go home, with an easy conscience for a Christmas holiday.