The Harbor Master

Theodore Goodridge Roberts

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• Publié par: mivar
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 25
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's The Harbor Master, by Theodore Goodridge Roberts This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Harbor Master Author: Theodore Goodridge Roberts Release Date: February 1, 2006 [EBook #17658] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARBOR MASTER *** Produced by David Garcia, Cori Samuel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE HARBOR MASTER BY THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS AUTHOR OF "Rayton: A Backwoods Mystery," "A Captain of Raleigh's," "A Cavalier of Virginia," "Captain Love," "Brothers of Peril" and "Hemming, the Adventurer." MADE IN U.S.A. M.A. DONOHUE & COMPANY CHICAGO NEW YORK Copyright, 1911 BY STREET & SMITH Copyright, 1913 By L.C. Page & Company (INCORPORATED) All rights reserved First Impression, January, 1913 Second Impression, February, 1913 The English edition of this book is entitled "The Toll of the Tides," but the American publishers have preferred to retain the author's original title, "The Harbor Master." CONTENTS I. BLACK D ENNIS N OLAN II. N OLAN SHOWS H IS APTITUDE FOR C OMMAND III. FOXEY JACK QUINN SLIPS AWAY IV. D EAD MAN'S D IAMONDS V. FATHER MCQUEEN VISITS H IS FLOCK VI. THE GIRL FROM THE C ROSS-TREES VII. THE GOLD OF THE "R OYAL WILLIAM" 1 19 36 54 64 86 101 VIII. THE SKIPPER STRUGGLES AGAINST SUPERSTITION 115 IX. SOME EARLY VISITS 135 X. MARY KAVANAGH XI. THE SKIPPER C ARRIES A LETTER XII. D ICK LYNCH GOES ON THE WAR-PATH XIII. BILL BRENNEN PREACHES LOYALTY XIV. D ICK LYNCH MEETS MR. D ARLING XV. MR. D ARLING SETS OUT ON A JOURNEY XVI. MR. D ARLING ARRIVES IN C HANCE ALONG 147 164 181 194 210 225 235 XVII. MARY KAVANAGH U SES H ER WITS XVIII. MOTHER N OLAN D OES SOME SPYING XIX. MARY AT WORK AGAIN XX. FATHER MCQUEEN'S R ETURN 250 265 279 292 CHAPTER I BLACK DENNIS NOLAN At the back of a deep cleft in the formidable cliffs, somewhere between Cape Race to the southward and St. John's to the northward, hides the little hamlet of Chance Along. As to its geographical position, this is sufficient. In the green sea in front of the cleft, and almost closing the mouth of it, lie a number of great boulders, as if the breech in the solid cliff had been made by some giant force that had broken and dragged forth the primeval rock, only to leave the refuse of its toil to lie forever in the edge of the tide, to fret the gnawing currents. At low tide a narrow strip of black shingle shows between the nearer of these titanic fragments and the face of the cliff. The force has been at work at other points of the coast as well. A mile or so to the north it has broken down and scattered seaward a great section of the cliff, scarring the water with a hundred jagged menaces to navigation, and leaving behind it a torn sea front and a wide, uneven beach. About three miles to the south of the little, hidden village it has wrought similar havoc, long forgotten ages ago. Along this coast, for many miles, treacherous currents race and shift continually, swinging in from the open sea, creeping along from the north, slanting in from the southeast and snarling up (but their snarling is hidden far below the surface) from the tide-vexed, storm-worn prow of old Cape Race. The pull and drift of many of these currents are felt far out from land, and they cannot be charted because of their shiftings, and their shiftings cannot be calculated with any degree of accuracy, because they seem to be without system or law. These are dangerous waters even now; and before the safeguard of a strong light on the cape, in the days when ships were helplessly dragged by the sea when there was no wind to drive them—in the days before a "lee-shore" had ceased to be an actual peril to become a picturesque phrase in nautical parlance—they constituted one of the most notorious disaster-zones of the North Atlantic. We are told, as were our fathers before us, that one man's poison may be another man's meat, and that it is an ill wind indeed that does not blow an advantage to somebody. The fundamental truths of these ancient saws were fully realized by the people of Chance Along. Ships went down in battered fragments to their clashing sea-graves, which was bad, Heaven knows, for the crews and the owners—but ashore, stalwart and gratified folk who had noted the storms and the tides ate well and drank deep and went warmly clad, who might otherwise have felt the gnawing of hunger and the nip of the wind. The people of Chance Along, with but a few exceptions, were Nolans, Lynches, Learys and Brennens. Their forebears had settled at the back of the cleft in the cliff a hundred years or more before the time of this history. They had been at the beginning, and still were, ignorant and primitive folk. Fishing in the treacherous sea beyond their sheltered retreat had been their occupation for several generations, brightened and diversified occasionally by a gathering of the fruits of storm. It was not until Black Dennis Nolan's time, however, that the community discovered that the offerings of the sea were sufficient—aye, more than sufficient—for their needs. This discovery might easily have been made by others than Black Dennis Nolan; but it required this man's daring ingenuity and powers of command to make it possible to profit by the discovery. Black Dennis Nolan was but little more than a lad when he commenced the formidable task of converting a poverty-stricken community of cod-fishers into a band of daring, cunning, unscrupulous wreckers. He possessed a dominating character, even in those days, and his father had left him a small fore-and-aft schooner, a store well-stocked with hand-lines, provisions and gear, and a record chalked up on the inside of the door which showed, by signs and formulæ unintelligible to the stranger, every man in the harbor to be in his debt for flour, tea, molasses, tobacco and several other necessities of life. So Black Dennis Nolan was in a position, from the very first, to force the other men of the place to conform to his plans and obey his orders—more or less. For a time there were doubters and grumblers, old men who wagged their heads, and young men who sneered covertly or jeered openly; and later, as the rule of Dennis became absolute and somewhat tyrannical and the hand of Dennis heavy upon men of independent ways of thought, there were insurrections and mutinies. But Black Dennis Nolan was equal to every difficulty, even from the beginning. Doubters were convinced that he saw clearer than they, grumblers were satisfied, young men who jeered openly were beaten into submission with whatever weapon came most conveniently to hand. Dennis was big, agile, and absolutely fearless, and when he dealt a blow with an oar, a skiff's thwart, or a pole from a drying-stage, a second effort was seldom required against the same jeerer. Once or twice, of course, he had to hit many times and was compelled to accept some painful strokes in return. One or two of these encounters are worthy of treatment in detail, if only to show something of the natures of Black Dennis Nolan and his companions. Immediately after his father's untimely death (the poor man was carried out to sea on a small pan of ice, while engaged in killing seals off the mouth of the harbor, in the spring of the year), Black Dennis was addressed by the title of "Skipper." The title and position became his, without question, along with his unfortunate father's schooner, store, and list of bad debts. The new skipper's first move towards realizing his dreams of affluence and power was to build a small hut of stones, poles, and sods both at the place of the broken cliff a mile to the north of Chance Along, and at the place of similar physical character three miles to the southward. It was winter at the time—a fine season for wrecks, but an uncomfortable season for spending one's nights in an ill-made hut, and one's days on the brink of a cliff, without companionship, gazing seaward through a heavy telescope for some vessel in distress. But the skipper had made his plans and did not care a snap of his finger for discomforts for himself or his friends. He knew that out of every ten wrecks that took place on the coast within twenty miles of Chance Along, not more than one profited the people of his harbor. They never went afield in search of the gifts of the treacherous sea. They took what they could clutch of what was thrown at their very doors, even then letting much escape them, owing to lack of science and organization. The new skipper meant to alter this condition of things—and he knew that the waters in the immediate vicinity of Chance Along were neither the most dangerous on the coast, nor the most convenient for the salving of wreckage and fast-drowning cargoes. So he established stations at Squid Beach to the northward, and at Nolan's Cove to the southward, and ordered Nick Leary and Foxey Jack Quinn to take up their abode in the new huts; Nick at Squid Beach, and Foxey Jack at the Cove, had to keep a sharp look-out for ships during bad weather and at night. Should either of them remark any signs of a vessel in distress he was to return to Chance Along at top speed, and report the same. Nick Leary and Foxey Jack Quinn were older men than the skipper by a few years, and the fathers of families—of half-starved families. Nick was a mild lad; but Foxey Jack had a temper as hot as his hair. "What bes yer idee, skipper?" asked Nick. Dennis explained it briefly, having outlined his plans several times before. "An' how long does we have to stop away?" asked Nick. "Five days. Yer watch'll be five days, an' then I'll be sendin' out two more lads," replied the skipper. Foxey Jack Quinn stood, without a word, his vicious face twisted with a scowl