CHAPTER II

NOLAN SHOWS HIS APTITUDE FOR COMMAND


The big ship was hopelessly astray in the fog and in the grip of a
black, unseen current that dragged at her keel and bulging beam, pulling
her inexorably landward towards the hidden rocks. Her commander felt
danger lurking in the fog, but was at a loss to know on which side to
look for it, at what point to guard against it. He was a brave man and a
master of seamanship in all the minute knacks and tricks of seamanship
of that day; but this was only his third voyage between London and the
St. Lawrence, and the previous trips had been made in clear weather. The
gale had blown him many miles out of his course, and lost him his
main-top-ga'ntsail yards and half of his mizzen-mast; the cold snap had
weighted ship and rigging with ice, and now the fog and the uncharted
deep-sea river had confused his reckoning utterly. But even so, he
might have been able to work his vessel out of the danger-zone had any
signal been made from the coast in reply to his guns and flares. Even if
after the arrival of the men from Chance Along on the beach at Nolan's
Cove, the heaps of driftwood had been fired, he might have had time to
pull his ship around to the north, drag out of the current that was
speeding towards the hidden rocks, and so win away to safety. There was
wind enough for handling the ship, he knew all the tricks of cheating a
lee-shore of its anticipated spoils, and the seas were not running
dangerously high. But his guns and flares went unanswered. All around
hung the black, blind curtains of the fog, cruelly silent, cruelly
unbroken by any blink of flame.