The Harbor Master Part 24

"Follow me!" shouted the skipper, dropping the dispatch-box of loose jewels to the trampled snow and pulling his pistols from his pocket.

The men of Chance Along and Pierre Benoist's ruffians met at the foot of the steep slope, among the upper rank of cabins. All doubts as to the intentions of the visitors were dispelled from the skipper's mind by a voice shouting, "Git inside the houses, lads, an' pull up the floors.

There bes where ye'll find the stuff. Git into the big house. _It_ be fair full o' gold an' jewels."

The voice was that of d.i.c.k Lynch. The skipper knew it, and his pistols flashed and banged in his hands.

The light of the stars, dimmed by a high, thin veil of mist, was not good enough to fight scientifically by. After the first clash it was almost impossible to know friend from foe at the length of an arm.

Single combats, and cursing knots of threes and fours, staggered and swatted among the little dwellings. The work was entirely too close for gun-work, and so the weapons were clubbed and the affair hammered out like hot irons on an anvil.

After ten minutes of it the skipper found himself in front of his own door, with a four-foot stick of green birch in his hands, and something wet and warm trickling from his forehead into his left eye. Three men were at him. Bill McKay was one of them and Pierre Benoist another.

McKay fought with a clubbed musket, and the French sailor held a dirk in one hand and an empty pistol in the other. The third prodded about in the background with a cutla.s.s. He seemed to be of a retiring disposition.

The skipper defended his position heroically; but after two minutes of it the musket proved heavier than the club of birch, and he received a crack on his left shoulder that put one arm out of action. The Frenchman ducked and slipped in; but the skipper's boot on his collar-bone set him back for a moment and sent the knife tinkling to the ground. But the same movement, thanks to the little wad of snow on the heel of his boot, brought the skipper to the flat of his back with a bone-shaking slam. The clubbed musket swung up--and then the door flew open above his upturned face, candle-light flooded over him and a sealing-gun flashed and bellowed. Then the threatening musket fell of its own weight, from dead hands--and the skipper went to sleep with more stars twirling white and green fire across his inner vision than he had ever seen in the sky.

It was daylight when Black Dennis Nolan next opened his eyes. He was in his own bed. He felt very sick in the stomach, very light in the head, very dry in the mouth. Old Mother Nolan sat beside the bed, smoking her pipe.

"Was it ye let off the old gun out the door?" he asked.

"Nay, 'twas Mary done it," replied Mother Nolan, blinking her black eyes at him.

"An' where bes Mary now?" he asked.

"In me own bed. Sure, when she was draggin' ye into the house, didn't some divil jab her in the neck wid a great knife."

The skipper sat up, though the effort spun a purple haze across his eyes, and set a lump of red-hot iron knocking about inside his skull.

"Bes she--dead?" he whispered.

"Nay, lad, nay, she bain't what ye'd call dead," replied the old woman.

The skipper rolled to the floor, scrambled to his feet, reeled across the kitchen and into the next room, and sank at the side of Mary's bed.

He was done. He could not lift himself an inch higher; but a hand came down to him, over the side of the bed, and touched his battered brow.

A week later, Mary Kavanagh was able to sit up in Mother Nolan's bed; and the skipper was himself again, at least as far as the cut over his eye and the b.u.mp on top of his head were concerned.

The skipper and Mother Nolan sat by Mary's bed. The skipper looked older, wiser and less sure of himself than in the brisk days before the raid.

"I bes a poor man now," he said. "Sure, them robbers broke t'rough this harbor somethin' desperate! Didn't the back o' the chimley look like the divil had been a-clawin' it out?"

"Quick come and quick go! Ye bes lucky, lad, they didn't sail away wid yer fore-an'-after," said Mother Nolan.

"Aye, Granny; but it do beat me how ever they come to dig up the kitchen-floor."

"Sure, an' they didn't," said Mary. "'Twas meself done that--an' sent the red an' white diamonds away wid Flora's man. 'Twas himself ye took 'em from, Denny Nolan."

"An' a good thing, too," said Mother Nolan. "Sure, ye sent all the curses o' Chance Along away together, Mary dear! There bain't no luck in wracked gold, nor wracked diamonds--nor wracked women! Grub an' gear bes our right; but not gold an' humans."

The skipper gazed at the girl until her eyes met his.

"Was ye workin' agin me all the time?" he asked, quietly.

"Nay, Denny, but I was workin' _for_ ye--all the time," she whispered.

"Sure she was," said Mother Nolan, puffing at her pipe. "Aye--an' many's the time 'twas on me tongue to call her a fool for her trouble, ye was that bewitched an' bemazed, lad."

The skipper stared at the floor for a long time, in silence. At last he said, "Wid the way ye was workin', Mary, the wonder bes to me what for ye risked the knife in yer neck to save me life from the Frenchman."

"Denny, ye bes still a fool!" exclaimed Mother Nolan. "When you bain't one manner o' fool ye bes another! What for? d'ye ask! Well, what for?"

"Sure, I was only wonderin'," said the man, glancing shyly and hopefully at the girl in the bed.

Father McQueen reached Chance Along early in June. He found plenty of work awaiting him, including six ma.s.ses for the newly-dead, and the building of the church. The general tone of the harbor impressed him as being strangely subdued. Even Black Dennis Nolan seemed less vivid and dominant in his bearing; but in spite of this change in him, he refused to put off his wedding even for the glory of being married in the new church.

In spite of a scar on her round, white neck, Mary Nolan was the grandest-looking, sweetest bride that had ever been seen in Chance Along. Denny thought so, and old Barney Keen said it, and Mother Nolan proved it by admitting that even she herself had not cut such a figure, under similar circ.u.mstances, fifty years ago. And on the morning after the wedding, the skipper and Mary set out on their honeymoon to St.

John's, aboard the fore-and-after, with a freight of salvaged cargo under the hatch instead of thiefed jewels and gold. Back in the harbor the men unmoored their skiffs for the fis.h.i.+ng, even as their fathers had done since the first Nolan and the first Leary spied that coast. They grumbled a little, as was their nature; but there was no talk of mutiny or treason. The red tide of greed had ebbed away with the pa.s.sing of the sense of possession, and the fear of bewitchment had faded away with the departure of the innocent witch.

THE END.

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