The Harbor Master Part 5

CHAPTER IV

DEAD MAN'S DIAMONDS

Now I must hark back a few hours to the time when the skipper and his lieutenants were on their way to the barrens behind Nolan's Cove to safeguard the interests of the harbor by changing the hiding-place of the common treasure of jewelry. They had not been gone half an hour from Chance Along before Foxey Jack Quinn slipped from his cabin and glided, like a darker shadow in the darkness, to the skipper's house. He was not ignorant of his enemy's departure southward. He knew that both young Cormick and old Mother Nolan were heavy sleepers; and, earlier in the evening, he had seen something through the window of the guest-chamber that had aroused his curiosity and a pa.s.sion of avarice.

Foxey Jack Quinn was warmly clothed. His rackets and a light pack were on his back and his pockets were stuffed with food and a flask of rum.

He was armed with a hatchet. He crouched beside the window of the empty room for several minutes, listening intently and fearfully. At last he wedged the strong blade of his hatchet between the sash of the window and the frame and prised inward, steadily and cautiously. With a shrill protest of frosted spikes the lower part of the sash gave by an inch or two. He devoted another minute to listening, then applied the hatchet to the left side of the window. He worked all round the sash in this way and at last pushed it inward with both hands until it hung below the sill by a couple of bent spikes. He thrust the hatchet in his belt and entered the room. He put up his hand to the rafter that crossed the low ceiling and so felt his way along to the middle of the room. Halting there, he removed the fur mitten from his right hand and felt about until his chilled fingers discovered a thin crack in the whitewash of the rafter. The little square of dry wood came away in his fingers. Next moment he held the leather-bound casket in his hand. He opened it and felt the cold jewels which he could not see. Then he closed it, slipped it into a pocket, replaced the square of wood in the beam and made his cautious way back to the window. He crawled over the sill, turned and tried to lift the sash upward and outward to its place. The sash came up easily enough but the bent spikes would not hold. After a few minutes of fruitless effort he turned away, leaving the window wide open. The sky was black as the throat of a chimney. A breath of wind came from the northwest. Foxey Jack Quinn was not weatherwise, however. He climbed the path to the edge of the barrens and turned to the north.

"Diamonds white an' red," he muttered. "I seen 'em, and I knowed what they was. Every little stone bes worth more nor all the fore-and-afters on the coast. I bes a rich man now--richer nor the governor, richer nor any marchant in St. John's--richer nor the king o' England, maybe. Holy saints be praised! Never agin will I wet a line at the fishin' nor feel the ache o' hunger in my belly. Denny Nolan will soon be cursin' the day he batted me about like a swile."

His plans for the immediate future were clear in his mind but for the more distant future they were vague, though rosy. He would make the ten miles to Brig Tickle in less than three hours, and from there turn a point or two westward from the coast and strike across country to the head of Witless Bay. He had a cousin in Witless Bay and could afford to rest in that cousin's house for a few hours. There he would hire a team of dogs and make the next stage in quick time. Dennis Nolan, who would not discover the theft of the diamonds until after sun-up, would be left hopelessly astern by that time. So Quinn figured it out. On reaching St.

John's he would go to a shebeen that he knew, in a narrow and secluded back street, and there rent a room. Then he would commence the business of disposing of one of the diamonds. Just how he was to go about this he did not know, but he felt sure that Mother McKay, who kept the shebeen, would be able to give him some valuable advice on the subject. And after that? Well, the prospects were rosy but vague. He would get word to his wife in some way to move herself and the children to Witless Bay. He would send her twenty dollars, and after that, for the rest of his life, ten good dollars every month. As for himself, he would sail away to some big city "up-along"--to Boston, New York or London--dispose of the necklace stone by stone, buy a great house and live in idle luxury. He would dress like a merchant, eat hearty every day, drink deep and sleep warm. He had heard of such things--of men who never set their hands to a stroke of work from year's end to year's end. He would live like a king and drink like a lord and, like the good father and husband that he firmly believed himself to be, he would send ten dollars to his wife every month.

With such exalted dreams as these did Foxey Jack Quinn occupy his mind as he hurried northward along the edge of the snowy barrens. He had travelled about two miles when he suddenly became aware of the increased force and coldness of the wind. Snow as dry as desert-sand and as sharp as splintered ice blew against his face, stinging his eyes (one of which was still half closed), and smarting the battered flesh of brow and cheek. Then, for the first time, he realized that one of those dreaded storms out of the northwest was approaching. But for the treasure in his pocket he would have faced about and returned to Chance Along; but as it was he drew his fur cap lower about his ears, wound a woollen scarf around the lower part of his face and held doggedly on his way. The wind lulled for a little while, quieting his apprehensions. His rackets were on his feet now and he pushed along briskly over the pallid snow, through the whispering dark. He had covered another mile before the skirmishers of the storm rushed over him again out of the black northwest. That bitter wind soaked through his heavy garments like water and chilled him to the heart. Its breath of dry snow, embittered and intensified by its rushing journey across frozen seas and a thousand miles of frozen wilderness, blinded him, cut him and s.n.a.t.c.hed at his lips as if it would pluck life itself from his lungs. He turned his back to it and crouched low, gasping curses and half-choked prayers to the saints. Then the full fury of the storm reached him, the dark grew pallid with flying snow-dust, and the frozen earth seemed to quake beneath his hands and knees. For a minute he lay flat, fighting for breath with his arms encircling his face. He knew that he must find shelter of some description immediately or else die terribly of suffocation and cold. Surely he could find a thicket of spruce-tuck near at hand? He staggered to his feet, stood hunched for a second to get the points of the compa.s.s clear in his mind, then plunged forward, fighting through the storm like a desperate swimmer breasting the surf. He thought he was moving straight inland where he would be sure to stumble soon against a sheltering thicket. But the onslaught of the storm had bewildered him. He struggled onward; but not toward the twisted clumps of spruces. His eyes were shut against the lashing of the snow and he held his arms locked before him across his mouth and nostrils. The wind eddied about him, thick as blown spray with its swirling sheets of ice particles. It struck him on all sides, lashing his face and tearing at his back whatever way he turned.... A scream of horror rang out for an instant and was smothered by the roaring of the storm. So the spirit of Jack Quinn was whirled away on the tempest--G.o.d knows whither!--and the poor body came to rest on the frozen land-wash far below the edge of the blind, unheeding cliff.

The storm raged all day out of the northwest, and the folk of Chance Along kept to their cabins and cl.u.s.tered around their little stoves.

Even Black Dennis Nolan did not venture farther than fifty yards from his own door. He replaced the window of Father McQueen's room, said nothing of his loss to Cormick and the old woman, and after breakfast went out and fought his way along to Foxey Quinn's cabin. He found the woman in tears.

"Where bes Jack?" he asked, drawing the door tight behind him and standing with his hand on the latch.

"He bain't here," said the woman. "He was gone from the bed when first I opened my eyes."

The skipper was a hard man in many ways, even then. Later, as he became established in his power, the hardness grew in him with the pa.s.sing of every day. But always a tender spot could be found in his heart for women and children.

"He was to my house last night," he said. "He bust in a windy an' tried to rob me--aye, an' maybe he done it."

The woman covered her face with her rough, red hands and moaned like a wounded thing.

"I bain't holdin' it agin' ye," continued the skipper. "I fight wid men, not women an' childern. I fit Jack Quinn fair an' bate him fair. Let it be! If ye wants for food, Polly--whenever ye wants for food an'

clothin'--send the word to me. I bes skipper in this harbor--aye, an'

more nor skipper."

He turned then and let himself out into the shrieking storm. Polly Quinn stared at the door and the children cl.u.s.tered about her and pulled at her shabby skirts.

"Aye, he tells true," she murmured. "Never a hard word did Mother Nolan ever have from him. He was a good son to his mother an' the old skipper.

But them as crosses him--the holy saints presarve 'em! Men-folks must be his dogs or his enemies. He batted me poor Jack nigh to death wid his big hands."

She turned at last and fed the glowing stove. Then she set about getting breakfast for herself and the children. There was enough hard bread in the house to last the day. There was a pinch of tea in the canister.

Jack had drunk the wine from the wreck and taken away with him all that had been left of the tinned meats which the skipper had brought over the day before. The woman observed these things and gave some thoughts to them. She glanced up at the blinding white tumult against the drifted window, reflecting that her husband had taken the best food in the house--enough to last him for two days, at least--and had left behind him, for herself and three children, eight cakes of hard bread and a pinch of tea. Her faded eyes glowed and her lips hardened.

Black Dennis Nolan brooded all day by the stove with his big hands clasped idly between his knees. The grandmother sat near him, in a tattered armchair, smoking her pipe and mumbling wise saws and broken stories of the past.

"I bes a storm-child," she mumbled. "Aye, sure, wasn't I born a night in winter wid jist sich a flurry as this one howlin' over Chance Along--aye, an' wid a caul over me face. So I has the power o' seein'

the fairies." And then, "me man were bigger nor ye, Denny. Skipper Tim, he were. Built the first fore-an'-after on this coast, he did." And later--"There bain't no luck in diamonds. The divil bes in 'em."

Young Cormick sat on the other side of the stove, busily carving a block of wood with a clasp-knife.

CHAPTER V

FATHER MCQUEEN VISITS HIS FLOCK

After the storm from the northwest had blown itself out, a spell of soft weather set in along the coast. East and southeast winds brought fog and mild rains, the ice rotted along the land-wash and the snow dwindled from the barrens and left dripping hummocks and patches of black bog exposed. The wreck in Nolan's Cove had gone to pieces during the blizzard, sunk its cargo of pianos, manufactured cotton and hardware in six fathoms of water and flung a liberal proportion of its spars and timbers ash.o.r.e.

Black Dennis Nolan felt as sure that Jack Quinn had perished in the storm as if he had seen him p.r.o.ne and stiff under the drifting snow. The fool had left the harbor that night, sometime before the onslaught of the blizzard, but after midnight to a certainty. He had gone out--and he had not returned! There could be no doubt about his miserable fate. The skipper pictured him in his clear mind as lying somewhere out on the barrens with the red-bound casket clutched in a frozen hand. So the skipper devoted a day to searching for him over the thawing, sodden wilderness behind the harbor. He took Bill Brennen and Nick Leary with him. The other men did not grumble at being left behind, perhaps because they were learning the unwisdom of grumbling against the skipper's orders, more likely because they did not care a dang if Foxey Jack Quinn was ever found or not, dead or alive. Quinn had not been popular. The skipper informed his two companions that the missing man had broken into his house and robbed him of an article of great value.

"We bes sure to find him somewheres handy," said Bill Brennen. "Foxey Jack was always a fool about the weather--didn't know east from west when the wind blowed. What was it he robbed from ye, skipper?"

"Whatever it was, ye'll both git yer share if we finds it," replied the skipper. "More nor that I bain't willin' to say."

He fixed Bill Brennen with a glance of his black eyes that made that worthy tremble from his scantily-haired scalp to the soles of his big, shuffling feet. Bill was one of those people who cannot get along without a master. In the past, for lack of another, he had made an exacting tyrant out of a very mild and loving wife; but since the masterful opening of the new skipper's reign he had snapped his fingers at his wife, who had ruled him for close upon twenty years. He was shrewd, though weak, and his heart was full of the stuff in which personal loyalty is bred and fostered. If the hand that beat him was the hand that fed him--the hand of his master--then the beating seemed an honorable and reasonable thing to him. True, the skipper had not yet lifted a fist to him; but in this case darkling glances served quite as well as blows. Bill had seen the strength of Dennis from the first and from the first had loved it as a thing to serve--as the spirit of mastery. Nick Leary, though a much younger man than Bill Brennen, possessed the same spirit of service.

The three searched the barrens all day, from sun-up to dark, north, south and inland. It was a gray day, sloppy underfoot and raw overhead.

At one time the skipper halted and lit his pipe within three yards of the point of the edge of the cliff from which Quinn had pitched to his death; but wind, snow and thaw had obliterated all trace of those blindly staggering feet. The searchers explored the inner, tangled recesses of a dozen thickets of spruce-tuck, snarled coverts of alders, hollows hip-deep in sodden snow, and the pits and rocky shelters of knolls and hummocks.

"He bes hid away somewheres, sure's Saint Peter was a fisherman," said the skipper.

"Axin' yer pardon, skipper, I bes t'inkin' as how maybe he bain't dead,"

said Nick Leary, humbly. "Maybe he got t'rough to Brig Tickle, sir, an'

from the Tickle he'd be headin' for Witless Bay this very minute."

The skipper shook his head.

"There bain't a man on the coast could live t'rough a flurry the like o'

that widout he found shelter," he replied. "He bes dead somewheres widin t'ree or four mile o' Chance Along, ye kin lay to that, Nick."

They returned to the harbor after dark and said not a word to the others about the business that had occupied them throughout the day; Brennen and Nick Leary were asked many questions, but they lied valiantly, saying that they had been spying out boat-timber. Had they admitted that they had devoted a whole day to searching over the barren for the body of Foxey Jack Quinn a suspicion that the missing man had carried away something of extraordinary value would have fired the harbor and set every able-bodied inhabitant on the quest. That would not have suited the skipper's plans. He did not want a knowledge of the necklace of diamonds and rubies to become general.

Doubtless the search for Jack Quinn would have been continued on the following day but for the unexpected arrival in Chance Along of the good Father McQueen. The missionary's visits were usually unexpected. He came now from the northward, on foot and unattended. In a haversack on his st.u.r.dy shoulders he carried food, two books of devotions and one of Irish poetry, and his vestments. Children who were playing a game called "deer-hunting" on the barrens behind the harbor were the first to know of the priest's approach. They shouted the news down to the gray cabins on the slope. A few of the men were working out among the rocks, under the skipper's supervision; others were cobbling skiffs and bullies that lay high and dry beneath the empty stages, and the old fellows were sitting around, giving advice and sucking at rank pipes. The harbor was at peace; and, what was still more unusual, it was free from hunger-fear. By the skipper's first important stroke of business his reign promised to be prosperous, even though tyrannical. At word that Father McQueen was sighted all work was stopped. The dories among the outer rocks were pulled to the land-wash. The men left their tarring and caulking under the drying-stages. Women issued from the cabins with shawls thrown hastily about their heads and shoulders. The skipper led the way up the twisty path to the level wilderness above. There was one man in the world whom he feared--feared without bitterness even as he did the saints on their thrones of gold. That man was Father McQueen.

Cap in hand, Black Dennis Nolan took the haversack from the priest and slung it on his own shoulder.

"Ye've walked a weary way, father," he said. "Ye bes mud and water to the knees, sir."

"But a step, Denny. Naught but a step, my son," replied the missionary, cheerfully. "I was in Witless Bay for two holy baptisms, a marriage an'

a wake, an' I just took the notion to step over an' see ye all in Chance Along. _Pax vobisc.u.m_, all of ye! My children, ye look grand an'

hearty. How is Mother Nolan, the dear old body? Spry as ever, ye say?

Praise the saints for that."

The people, men, women, and children, cl.u.s.tered round him with beaming faces, and in return he beamed at one and all, and spoke to a dozen by name. He leaned on the skipper's arm.

"But it bes still early in the forenoon, father," said Dennis. "Where did yer reverence sleep last night then?"

"Snug as a fox in his den, my son," replied the st.u.r.dy old man. "When dark came on I found me a dry cave in the side of a knoll, an' dry moss an' sticks for a fire."