The Harbor Master Part 4

The skipper returned to the store, took up his bag of gold and went home. He lived with his grandmother, old Kate Nolan (commonly known in the harbor as Mother Nolan) and with his young brother Cormick. The cottage was the largest in the harbor--a grand house altogether. It contained three rooms, a loft, and a lean-to extension occupied by a pig and a dozen fowls. The skipper found the old woman squatted in a low chair beside the stove in the main room. This room served as kitchen, dining-room, general reception, and the skipper's bed-room. A ladder led up to the loft from one corner. Of the remaining rooms on the ground floor one was where the grandmother slept, and the other one was kept spotless, musty and airless for the occasional occupation of good Father McQueen, the missionary priest, who visited Chance Along three times a year. Cormick slept in the loft.

Mother Nolan glanced up from the red draft of the stove at her grandson's entrance. She held a short clay pipe in one wrinkled hand.

She regarded the youth inscrutably with black, undimmed eyes, but did not speak. He closed the door, faced her and extended the heavy bag of coins.

"Granny, we bes rich this minute; but we'll be richer yet afore we finishes," he said. "This bag bes full o' gold, Granny--full o' coined English gold."

"Out o' the wrack?" she queried.

"Aye, it was in the s.h.i.+p, Granny."

The old woman puffed on her pipe for a few seconds.

"An' what else come out o' the wrack, Denny?"

"Diamonds an' rubies an' pearls, the wine ye drank last night an' the fancy grub ye et to-day. 'Twas a grand wrack altogether, Granny."

Mother Nolan wagged her gray head and returned her gaze to the red draft of the stove. "'Twas grand wine," she muttered. "Wracker's wine! Dead man's wine!"

"Nay, Granny, there ye bes wrong. Not a lad aboard her was killed nor drownded."

"Then how come ye by the gold an' diamonds, Denny?"

The skipper laughed.

"Sure, Granny, I tricked 'em!" he exclaimed. "I made use o' my wits--an'

the harbor bes rich."

"Saints pity ye, Denny! Rich? The folk o' this harbor bain't intended for riches. Take a care, Denny, for the devil bes in it. Saints presarve us! No good never did come to this harbor out o' wracks, Denny. Me own father was drunk wid rum out o' a wrack when he fell over the edge o'

the cliff, an' broke his neck on the land-wash. It was for a case o'

brandy out o' a wrack Pat Walen an' Micky Nolan fit wid skulpin'-knives till Pat was killed dead."

The skipper laughed again and expanded his chest.

"There bain't no fightin' over wracks now," he said. "I bes skipper now, Granny. Do this, do that, says I--an' it's done! An' I gives out the shares to the men like I was master o' a sealin'-s.h.i.+p after a trip to the ice--one share to every man o' the crew an' four to meself. There bain't no shares for s.h.i.+p an' owners in this business, Granny."

"An' where be the diamonds?" asked the old woman.

"Hid in the marsh, safe an' sound till I takes 'em to St. John's,"

replied the skipper.

"There bain't no luck in diamonds," mumbled the old woman, "an' there bain't no luck in wracks. The devil bes in the both o' them, Denny."

The skipper pa.s.sed through his grandmother's bed-room and entered the cold and un-aired chamber that was reserved for the use of Father McQueen. He closed the door behind him, bolted it stealthily and then tiptoed across the floor to the bulging chimney and empty fire-place. He knelt on the drafty hearth, placed the bag of gold beside his knee, and thrust both arms into the black maw of the chimney. After a minute of prying and pulling he withdrew them, holding a square, smoke-smudged stone in his hands. Laying this on the hearth, he took up the canvas bag and thrust it into a cavity at the back of the chimney that had been ready for the reception of just such a treasure for some time. Then he replaced the stone and scrambled to his feet. He glanced furtively at the one small window which lighted the room, then moved noiselessly to the centre of the floor and put up his right hand to the whitewashed beam that crossed the low ceiling. His fingers searched delicately for a full minute; and then he lowered his hand, holding a small square of dry wood. The beam had been skilfully hollowed at this point. From the cavity he took a small box bound in red leather--the same small box that he had found among the sheets and blankets of a berth in the wreck. He opened it and gloated over a necklace of twelve diamonds and fourteen rubies glinting, flas.h.i.+ng and glowing on a bed of white satin. He fondled the wonderful stones with his blunt finger-ends. So he stood for a long time, breathing heavily, his black eyes glowing like the rubies and glinting like the diamonds.

"A fortune," he murmured. "Aye, houses an' s.h.i.+ps, liquor, food an'

sarvants. Holy saint! I bes richer nor any marchant in St. John's!"

At last he closed the box, put it back in the cavity overhead, and returned the small square of wood to its place. He looked around the room. The fading light of the winter day was gray at the window. The curtained bed was a ma.s.s of gloom; a white Christ on a cross of ebony gleamed above the narrow chimney-shelf, between two candlesticks of dull bra.s.s; the floor, with its few rough mats, was as cold as the frozen snow outside. The skipper felt the chill of the place in his st.u.r.dy bones. He shot a glance at the crucifix. It, too, was an offering from the sea. His father had told him how it had come ash.o.r.e in the hand of a dead woman, thirty years ago. Now the carven image of the Saviour seemed to gleam out from the black of the cross and the shadowy wall as if with an inner illumination. Black Dennis Nolan made the sign with an awkward and unaccustomed finger, and then went swiftly from the room.

The skipper, Bill Brennen and Nick Leary left their cabins stealthily about midnight, met on the snowy barren above the harbor, and tramped southward to the vicinity of Nolan's Cove. They worked for a little while in a clump of spruce-tuck, then moved off to another thicket about half a mile away, and there worked again.

"There bes some men in this harbor I wouldn't trust as far as I could t'row 'em over my back," said the skipper.

Bill and Nick agreed with him. The skipper glanced up at the starless sky.

"There'll be snow by sun-up," he said.

"Aye, skipper, a desperate flurry out o' the nor'-west," replied Brennen.

"D'ye mean wind, too?"

"Aye, skipper, mark that!"

All three felt a breath on their faces like the very essence of cold.

They turned northward and set out on the homeward way. All were snug in their beds long before the first pale hint of dawn. The icy draft from the northwest was a little stronger by that time, and it puffed a haze of dry and powdery snow before it. The night was full of faint, insistent voices. The roofs of the cabins snapped and creaked as if icy fingers were prying them apart. A sharp crackling sound came up from the harbor, where the tide fumbled at the edges of black ice. A dull, vast moaning that was scarcely a sound at all--something as vague, yet mighty as silence itself--drifted over the barrens and over the sheltered habitations out of the northwest.

When the skipper awoke in the morning the "flurry" was rolling over the brink of the barren, and down upon Chance Along in full force. The skipper piled dry wood--birch and splinters of wreckage--into the round stove, until it roared a miniature challenge to the ice-freighted wind outside. The bucket of water on the bench in the corner was frozen to half its depth. He cut at it with a knife used for skinning seals, and filled the tea-kettle with fragments of ice. His young brother Cormick came stiffly down the ladder from the loft, and stood close to the stove s.h.i.+vering.

"It bes desperate weather, Denny," said the lad. "Sure, I near froze in my blankets."

"Aye, Cormy, but we bes snug enough, wid no call to go outside the door," replied the skipper. "We has plenty o' wood an' plenty o' grub; an' we'll never lack the one or t'other so long as I bes skipper o' this harbor."

"Aye, Denny, we never et so well afore ye was skipper," returned Cormick, looking at his brother in frank admiration. "Grub--aye, an'

gold too! I hears ye took a barrel o' money off that wrack, Denny."

"An' there'll be more wracks, Cormy, an' we'll take our pickin's from every one," said the skipper. "Times bes changed, lad. The day was when we took what the sea t'rowed up for us; but now we takes what we wants an' leaves what we don't want to the sea."

At that moment the voice of old Mother Nolan sounded fretfully from the next room.

"Denny! Cormy!" she called. "I bes fair peris.h.i.+n' to death in my bed.

The wind bes blowin' an' yowlin' t'rough this room like the whole end o'

the house was knocked out."

The skipper, who was as gentle with his old grandmother and as kind to his young brother as the best man in the world could have been, crossed the kitchen immediately and opened the door of the old woman's chamber.

Mother Nolan was sitting up in her bed with a blanket on her thin, bent shoulders, and a red flannel night-cap on her gray head.

Her small face was pinched by cold and age, but her black eyes were alive and erect.

"The mats be squirmin' and flappin' on the floor like live fish," she exclaimed. "Saints presarve all poor creatures abroad this day on sea or land! They'll be starved to death wid the cold, Denny, for bain't I most blowed out o' my bed right in this grand house?"

The skipper realized that the room was colder than the middle apartment of the cabin had any right to be. He went to the window and examined it. The small frame was as tight in the wall as a dozen spikes and a liberal daubing of tar could make it. It had never been opened since the building of the house.

"The wind blows under Father McQueen's door like spray from the land-wash," said the old woman.

"'Twill be comin' down the chimbly," said Dennis, aware of the tide of icy wind low about his feet. He crossed the room and opened the door of the dismal chamber reserved for the use of the missionary. The sash of the window hung inward, the woodwork splintered and the spikes twisted, admitting a roaring current of wind and powdery snow. With a cry of consternation and rage the skipper sprang in, banged and bolted the door behind him, and went straight to the rafter across the middle of the ceiling. He removed the square of wood--and the hollow behind it was empty! For a moment he stood with his empty hand in the empty hiding-place, unable to move or think because of the terrific emotions which surged through him. At last he went over to the chimney and examined it. The bag of gold was in its place.