But
Bateese was sending the canoe nearer with powerful strokes, and
the figures grew taller, and the spouts of flame higher. Then he
knew what was happening. The Boulain men were taking advantage of
the cool hours of the night and were tarring up.
He could smell the tar, and he could see the big York boats drawn
up in the circle of yellowish light. There were half a dozen of
them, and men stripped to the waist were smearing the bottoms of
the boats with boiling tar and pitch. In the center was a big,
black cauldron steaming over a gas-jet, and between this cauldron
and the boats men were running back and forth with pails. Still
nearer to the huge kettle other men were filling a row of kegs
with the precious black GOUDRON that oozed up from the bowels of
the earth, forming here and there jet-black pools that Carrigan
could see glistening in the flare of the gas-lamps. He figured
there were thirty men at work. Six big York boats were turned keel
up in the black sand. Close inshore, just outside the circle of
light, was a single scow.
Toward this scow Bateese sent the canoe. And as they drew nearer,
until the laboring men ashore were scarcely a stone's throw away,
the weirdness of the scene impressed itself more upon Carrigan.
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