Hawtrey's Deputy by Harold Bindloss

It was after a long and arduous journey which had left its mark on all of them that Wyllard and his companions lay among the boulders beside a sheltered inlet waiting for the dusk to fall one lowering evening. They were cramped and aching, for they had scarcely moved during the last hour; their garments were badly tattered, and their half-covered feet were bleeding. They were, as they recognised, a pitiful company to seize a vessel, with three knives and one rifle between them, but there was resolution in their haggard faces.

Close in front of them the green water lapped softly among the stones. The breeze was light off shore, and the tide, which was just running ebb, rippled against the bows of a little schooner lying some thirty yards from the bank. She had been seized for illegal sealing some years earlier, and it was evident that she had been very little used since then. The paint was peeling from her cracked and weathered side, her gear was frayed and bleached with frost and rain, and only very hard-pressed men would have faced the thought of going to sea in her. Wyllard and his companions were, however, very hard-pressed indeed, and they preferred the hazards of a voyage in the crazy vessel to falling into the Russians' hands. It was also clear that they had no choice. It must be either one thing or the other.