The Harbor Master Part 18

The bully rounded into Witless Bay and worked up to the settlement at the head of it without accident. Wick handed over his tobacco to Skipper Walsh; and then, with an eye on Mr. Darling, said he would call in a few days later for his trade of fish. Darling nodded, and purchased tea, hard-bread and bacon from the skipper. Later, he and George filled a small keg with water and put it aboard, and bought two sealing-guns and a supply of powder and slugs. They headed down the bay at the first gray wash of dawn. After three hours of hauling across the wind they rounded the southern headland of the bay. They made an easting of more than a mile before heading due south. Mr. Darling took the tiller now, and George manned the sheet. Darling produced a pair of marine gla.s.ses and the chart which he had made from information received from d.i.c.k Lynch.

They skirted a lee-sh.o.r.e and had to beat up to windward again and again to clear themselves. Before sunset they ran into a tiny, sheltered cove and made camp.

It was shortly after noon of the next day that Mr. Darling, diligently scrutinizing the sh.o.r.e through his gla.s.ses, saw something that caught his attention. He edged the bully in and looked again.

"By heaven, it is a man's leg!" he exclaimed. He pa.s.sed the gla.s.ses forward to Wick and pointed the direction.

"Sure," said Wick. "Sure, sir, it bes some poor divil wid a skinnywopper on his leg--so it bain't n.o.body from a wrack, ye kin lay to that."

They ran the bully sh.o.r.eward and lowered the sail. Darling sprang to the land-wash and found the battered body of a man wedged tight between two icy rocks at the foot of the cliff. It was frozen stiff; but it was evident that it had not always been frozen. The crabs had found it, and even the heavy clothing was torn to strips. Mr. Darling stooped and took a little, red-bound casket from the torn breast. With his back to George Wick he opened it with trembling fingers. The diamonds and rubies of Lady Harwood's necklace flashed up at him!

CHAPTER XVI

MR. DARLING ARRIVES IN CHANCE ALONG

Mr. John Darling stood spellbound for a full half-minute, gazing down at the flaming, flas.h.i.+ng gems coiled in their silken bed. He was aroused from his wonder and wild conjecture by the voice of George Wick.

"What bes the trouble, sir?" called the fisherman, who was busy fending the bully off the rocks. "Who bes it, anyhow? It bain't no friend o'

yerself, sir, surely?"

Darling shut the casket and slipped it into an inner breast-pocket of his reefer. He turned slowly toward the sea and the boat, with a studied expression of puzzled pity on his face.

"Some poor fellow who has stepped off the cliff," he said. "I never saw him before--but the sight of him shook me a bit. He has been here quite awhile, I should say--yes, through thaw and frost, frost and thaw. Aye, and the crabs have been at him, poor devil! I suppose we should bury him; but there is no place here to dig a grave."

"Come aboard, sir! Come aboard wid ye!" exclaimed Wick, in a trembling voice. "It bain't no affair of our'n, sir--an' there bes the divil's own luck in finding a dead man unexpected."

Mr. Darling crossed the land-wash without another word, waded knee-deep into the tide, and climbed aboard the boat. George Wick poled the bully clear of the surf with one of the oars, then jumped forward and hoisted the red sail. Darling drew his chart from his pocket, examined it, then raised his gla.s.ses and studied the coast-line to the southward. The wind was light, but dead on sh.o.r.e. The bully hauled across it cleverly. A whitish gray haze stood along the sky-line to the east.

"We'll be havin' thick weather afore sun-down, sir, wid this wind holdin'," said Wick.

Darling nodded. "We must be getting pretty close to Chance Along," he said. "Yes, there is smoke. Can you see it?"

George could not make it out with his una.s.sisted eyes, but through the gla.s.ses he saw the blue reek of wood-smoke above a distant point of the coast easily enough. An hour later the bully threaded the rocks off Squid Beach. d.i.c.k Lynch had spoken of these rocks when the rum was warm in his head, in the tap-room of the _s.h.i.+p Ahoy_, and Darling had marked them on his chart.

"We are within two miles of it," said Darling, his voice husky with emotion at thought of Flora Lockhart.

George Wick turned his face toward the east and the white wall of fog that now rolled upon the gray water within a mile of the coast.

"Aye, sir; but we'll not be makin' it afore the fog catches us," he replied.

"That will not bother my plans," said Darling. "I don't intend to sail right into Chance Along, anyway. I want to pay a surprise visit. We'll find a bit of a cove along here somewhere, I think."

He was right. About a mile and a half beyond the Squid Rocks they found a little sheltered cove that was no more than a pocket in the cliff. The beach was narrow, and a glance disclosed the fact that at every full tide it was entirely submerged; but a "drook" or a narrow cleft, thickly grown with hardy bushes, led up from the land-wash to the barrens above.

They lowered the sail and nosed their way into the cove. The streaming skirmishers of the fog were over them by this time. They beached the bully at the foot of the drook and made her fast.

"Keep everything aboard, and make yourself snug," said Mr. Darling.

"Watch the tide. Haul in and back off with it; and, whatever you do, lie low and keep quiet. I am going to take a look at Chance Along--on the sly, you understand. You'll know all about it later. Don't worry if I don't get back within the next two or three hours."

"Ye bes after Black Dennis Nolan, sir," said Wick.

Mr. Darling nodded, placed two loaded pistols in his pocket and vanished up the tangled slope of the drook. Wick listened to the upward scrambling until it suddenly died away and fog and silence covered him deep like a flood. Then he filled and lit his pipe and sat down in the shelter of a tarpaulin to think it over. He sensed danger in the blind choking air. He felt anxiety for his companion and fear for himself; but curiosity and a natural courage fortified him to a certain degree.

Upon reaching the level of the barrens, Mr. Darling stood motionless for a little while and listened intently to the vague, fog-m.u.f.fled breathing of the sea below him. He could hear nothing else. Turning to the south he moved silently forward along a well-worn path that traced the edge of the cliff. The fog was dense, and there was just enough wind to keep it drifting in from the sea. Darling held a boat-hook in his right hand and kept his eyes and ears alert. He heard a dog bark somewhere in front of him in the whitish-gray obscurity. Presently he came to where the path kinked and sloped down among a jumble of rocks, and at the same moment he caught the pungent, comforting smell of wood-smoke on the fog. Then he knew that Chance Along--the roof which sheltered Flora Lockhart--lay hidden and dripping beneath him. He was about to commence a cautious descent of the path, when a clamor of voices drifted up to him. He halted; and as the voices approached, together with the shuffle of climbing feet and the creak and clatter of shouldered boat-gear, he stepped aside. He saw the yellow blur of a lantern and immediately took up a position behind a great boulder. Bulky forms loomed into view at the top of the slope, broke from the blanketing fog for a moment, one by one, and plunged into it again, heading southward along the path. The big fellow in the lead carried the lantern, and the man at his elbow was talking excitedly as they pa.s.sed within an oar's length of Darling.

"I's bin watchin' her these five hours back, skipper, a-tryin' to beat out o' the drift o' wind an' tide widout one entire mast a-standin'," he said. "She wasn't a half-mile off the rocks when I left the cove, an'

a-firin' of her gun desperate. If she bain't stuck tight now, skipper, then me name bain't Tim Leary."

Mr. Darling stared and listened, as motionless as the boulder against which he leaned. They issued from the fog and were engulfed again in its clinging folds--twenty-five or thirty men and lads in all. Some carried coils of rope, others oars and boat-hooks. Several of them hauled empty sledges at their heels. The back of the last man vanished in the fog; but Mr. Darling remained in the shelter of the rock until the faintest whisper of their voices had died away before moving hand or foot.

"Organized wreckers," he muttered. "And that big pirate with the lantern was the skipper--the brute who is keeping Flora in this place! By G.o.d--I wonder just how much of a man, and how much of a beast he is! But now is my time, while they're all off waiting for another wreck to come ash.o.r.e to them--d.a.m.n them! The harbor must be about empty of able-bodied men just now."

He descended the twisting path cautiously. The small cabins of the fishermen presently loomed around him, here a gray gable, there a dull window, there an unpainted door--and below him a roof or two pus.h.i.+ng up through the fog from a lower terrace of the village. He groped his way about, pausing frequently to peer and hearken. From one cabin came the sound of a child crying angrily, from another the harsh coughing of some very old person, and from still another the whining of a dog. He moved to the left, feeling his way gingerly between the humble dwellings. A lighted window caught his attention, and then a man's voice, with a whimsical drawl and tw.a.n.g to it, raised in song.

"Her eyes were like the sea in June, Her lips was like a rose, Her voice was like a fairy bell A-ringin' crost the snows.

Then Denny, he forgot the wrack, Forgot the waves a-rollin', For she had put the witchy spell On Skipper Dennis Nolan,"

sang the voice behind the blurred yellow square of the window.

Darling approached the window on tip-toe and peered through the dripping gla.s.s. He saw that the vocalist was a long, thin fellow, with long, thin whiskers and a wooden leg, seated in a chair by a glowing stove. Two candles in tarnished bra.s.s sticks, a fiddle and bow, and a gla.s.s half full of red liquor that steamed, were on the corner of the deal table at his elbow. Beside him stood a young woman, long limbed, deep breasted, with a comely face that suggested cheeriness, but was now drawn and shadowed a little round the mouth and eyes with an expression of care.

But it was a good face, trustworthy, kind and wise; and the man at the window trusted it the moment he saw it.

"I'll risk it," he muttered. "The old man looks harmless enough--and I might stumble around here until the fog lifts or the skipper gets back, without so much as a word with Flora, at this rate."

He withdrew from the window and slid quietly along the wall of the cabin until he found the door. He pulled the glove from his right hand and rapped on the wet planks with his bare knuckles. The voice of the man with the wooden leg stopped dead in the middle of a line and shouted, "Come in." Darling lifted the latch, pushed the door half open, and stepped swiftly into the lighted room, closing the door smartly behind him. The man and the girl stared at him in astonishment. He removed his dripping cap from his head.

"Can you tell me where I can find Miss Flora Lockhart?" he asked.

The man gasped at that, and the girl's gray eyes brightened. The girl stepped forward, placed a strong, eager hand on his arm and gazed into his face without apology or embarra.s.sment. Darling returned the scrutiny unabashed.

"Ye be from up-along?" she queried. "Ye be a friend o' Flora's?"

"Yes," replied Darling. "I have heard that she is in this harbor--and that no word of her being here, or even of her being alive, has been sent out. Her friends believe her to be dead. And I heard that the man you call skipper is--is keeping her against her will. Of course, against her will! I have come to take her away--back to the world in which she belongs."

"Be ye alone, sir?" asked Pat Kavanagh, combing his beard with his long, lean fingers.

Darling frowned. "That's as may be," he said. "Alone or not, I'm no such fool as to tell it until I know how I stand with you; but I am armed, you may be sure!"

"Lad," said Pat, "I sees as how ye bes young, an' a sailor--aye, an'

bewitched, too. Sure, I was a sailor meself, in the old days. I likes the cut o' yer fore-sils, lad, an' the lines o' yer hull, so I tells ye, man to man like, watch out for the skipper. Aye, armed or empty-handed, alone or wid a crew at yer back, watch out for Black Dennis Nolan. He bes a grand lad in his own way, an' ginerous an' fair wid his friends--but Saint Peter help the man who hauls acrost his bows! If ye've come to Chance Along to take the girl away wid ye, then get hold o' her quick an' clear out wid her quick."

"I'll take ye to her, sir," said Mary, eagerly. "Come, sir! Come along wid ye. She bes at the skipper's own house."

"At his own house? So I heard," said Darling, thickly.

"Aye," said Pat, "an' safe as if she was in church, wid Mother Nolan to mind her. Sure, an' Denny Nolan bain't such a pirate as ye t'inks, sir.