The Harbor Master.

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts.

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 t.i.tanic 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-sh.o.r.e" had ceased to be an actual peril to become a picturesque phrase in nautical parlance--they const.i.tuted 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 formulae unintelligible to the stranger, every man in the harbor to be in his debt for flour, tea, mola.s.ses, 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 t.i.tle of "Skipper." The t.i.tle 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 scowling sneer. Both men departed, one for the beach to the north and the other for the Cove to the south, each carrying a kettle and bag of provisions, a blanket and tarnished spy-gla.s.s. Black Dennis Nolan turned to other work connected with the great scheme of transferring the activities of Chance Along from the catching of fish to the catching of maimed and broken ships. He set some of the old men and women to splicing ropes, stronger and more active folk to drilling a hole in the face of the cliff, near to the top of it and just to the right of the entrance to the narrow harbor. Others, led by the skipper himself, set to work at drilling holes in several of the great rocks that lay in the green tide beyond the mouth of the harbor, their heavy crowns lifting only a yard or two above the surface of the twisting currents. All this was but the beginning of a task that would require weeks, perhaps months, of labor to complete. It was Black Dennis Nolan's intention to construct, by means of great iron rings, bolts and staples, chain-cables, hawsers and life-lines, a solid net by the help of which his people could extend their efforts at salving the valuables from a fast-breaking vessel to the outermost rock of that dangerous archipelago, even at the height of a storm--with luck. In the past, even in his own time, several ships bound from Northern Europe for Quebec had been driven and dragged from their course, shattered upon those rocks, sucked off into deep water, and lost forever, without having contributed so much as a bale of sail-cloth to the people of Chance Along. He was determined that cases of this kind should not happen in the future. The net was to be so arranged that the greater part of it could be removed, and the balance submerged, with but slight effort, and later all returned to its working condition as easily; for it would not be well to draw the attention of outsiders to the contrivance. Wrecking, in those days, meant more than the salvage of cargoes, perhaps. The skipper hoped, in time (should the experiment prove successful at the mouth of the harbor), to rig the dangerous and productive archipelago off Squid Beach and Nolan's Cove with similar contrivances. There was not another man in Chance Along capable of conceiving such ideas; but Dennis was ambitious (in his crude way), imaginative, daring, unscrupulous and full of resources and energy.

All day the skipper and his men worked strenuously, and at break of dawn on the morrow they returned to their toils. By noon a gigantic iron hook, forged by the skipper himself, with a shank as thick as a strong man's arm and fully four feet long, had been set firmly in the face of the cliff. The skipper and five or six of his men stood at the edge of the barren, above the cliff and the harbor, wiping the sweat from their faces. Snow lay in patches over the bleak and sodden barren, a raw wind beat in from the east, and a gray and white sea snarled below.

"Boys," said the young skipper, "I's able to see ahead to the day whin there'll be no want in Chance Along, but the want we pretends to fool the world wid. Aye, ye may take Dennis Nolan's word for it! We'll eat an' drink full, lads, an' sleep warm as any marchant i' St. John's."

"What d.a.m.n foolery has ye all bin at now?" inquired a sneering voice.

All turned and beheld Foxey Jack Quinn standing near at hand, a leer on his wide mouth and in his pale eyes, and his nunney-bag on his shoulder. His skinnywoppers (high-legged moccasins of sealskin, hair-side inward) were glistening with moisture of melted snow, and his face was red from the rasp of raw wind. He looked as if he had slept in his clothes--which was, undoubtedly, the case. He glared straight at the skipper with a dancing flame of devilment in his eyes.

"What ye bin all a-doin' now for to make extry work for yerselves?" he asked.

There followed a brief silence, and then Black Dennis Nolan spoke quietly.

"Why bain't ye over to Squid Beach, standin' yer trick at look-out?" he inquired.

Foxey Jack's answer was a harsh, jeering laugh, and words to the effect that life was too short to spend five days of it lonely and starving with cold, in a hut not fit for a pig.

"Ye kin do what ye likes, yerself--ye an' them as be fools like yerself; but Jack Quinn bain't a-goin' to lend a hand a yer foolishness, Denny Nolan," he concluded.

"Turn round an' git back to yer post wid ye," said the skipper.

"Who be ye, an' what be ye, to give that word to me?"

"Ye knows who I be. Turn round an' git!"

"To h.e.l.l wid ye! I turns round for no man!"

"Then ye'd best drop yer nunney-bag, ye foxey-headed fool, for I bes a-comin' at ye to larn ye who bes skipper here."

Quinn let his nunney-bag fall to the snow behind him--and in the same instant of time the skipper's right fist landed on his nose, knocking him backward over the bag, clear off his feet, and staining his red whiskers to a deeper and brighter red. But the big fellow came up to his feet again as nimbly as a cat. For a moment the two clinched and swayed in each other's straining arms, like drunken men. The awed spectators formed a line between the two and the edge of the cliff. Foxey Jack broke the hold, leaped back and struck a furious, but ill-judged blow which glanced off the other's jaw. Next instant he was down on the snow again, with one eye shut, but up again as quickly.

Again they clinched and swayed, breast to breast, knee to knee. Both were large men; but Foxey Jack was heavier, having come to his full weight. This time it was the skipper who tried to break the hold, realizing that his advantage lay in his fists, and Quinn's in the greater weight of body and greater strength of back and leg. So the skipper twisted and pulled; but Quinn held tight, and slowly but surely forced the younger man towards the edge of the cliff. Suddenly the skipper drew his head back and brought it forward and downward again, with all the force of his neck and shoulders, fair upon the bridge of his antagonist's nose. Quinn staggered and for a second his muscles relaxed; and in that second the skipper wrenched away from his grasp and knocked him senseless to the ground.

"Lay there, ye sc.u.m!" cried Black Dennis Nolan, breathing heavily, and wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand. "Lay there an' be d.a.m.ned to ye, if ye t'ink ye kin say 'nay' when Dennis Nolan says 'aye.'

If it didn't be for the childern ye bes father of, an' yer poor, dacent woman, I'd t'row ye over the cliff."

Foxey Jack Quinn was in no condition to reply to the skipper's address.

In fact, he did not hear a word of it. Two of the men picked him up and carried him down a steep and twisting path to his cabin at the back of the harbor, above the green water and the gray drying-stages, and beneath the edge of the vast and empty barren. He opened one eye as they laid him on the bed in the one room of the cabin. He glared up at the two men and then around at his horrified wife and children.

"Folks," said he, "I'll be sure the death o' Black Dennis Nolan. Aye, so help me Saint Peter. I'll send 'im to h.e.l.l, all suddent un' unready, for the black deed he done this day!"

That was the first time the skipper showed the weight of his fist. His followers were impressed by the exhibition. The work went steadily on among the rocks in front of Chance Along for ten days, and then came twenty-four hours of furious wind and driving snow out of the northwest.

This was followed by a brief lull, a biting nip of frost that registered thirty degrees below zero, and then fog and wind out of the east. After the snowy gale, during the day of still, bitter cold, relief parties went to Squid Beach and Nolan's Cove and brought in the half-frozen watchers. For a day the look-out stations were deserted, the people finding it all they could do to keep from freezing in their sheltered cabins in Chance Along; but with the coming of the east wind and the fog, the huts of sods were again occupied.

The fog rolled in about an hour before noon; and shortly after midnight the man from Nolan's Cove groped his way along the edge of the cliff, down the twisty path to the cl.u.s.ter of cabins, and to Black Dennis Nolan's door. He pounded and kicked the door until the whole building trembled.

"What bes ye a-wantin' now?" bawled the skipper, from within.

"I seed a blue flare an' heared a gun a-firing to the sou'east o' the cove," bawled the visitor, in reply.

The skipper opened the door.

"Come in, lad! Come in!" he cried.

He lit a candle and set to work swiftly pulling on his outer clothes and sea-boots.

"There bes rum an' a mug, Pat. Help yerself an' then rouse the men," he said. "Tell Nick Terry an' Bill Brennen to get the gear together. Step lively! Rouse 'em out!"

Pat Lynch slopped rum into a tin mug, gulped it greedily, and stumbled from the candle-light out again to the choking fog. He would have liked to remain inside long enough to swallow another drain and fill and light his pipe; but with Black Dennis Nolan roaring at him like a walrus, he had not ventured to delay. He groped his way from cabin to cabin, kicking on doors and bellowing the skipper's orders.

An hour and a half later, twenty men of Chance Along were cl.u.s.tered at the edge of the broken cliff overlooking the beach of Nolan's Cove and the rock-scarred sea beyond. But they could see nothing of beach or tide. The fog clung around them like black and sodden curtains. Here and there a lantern made an orange blur against the black. Some of the men held coils of rope with light grappling-irons spliced to the free ends.

Others had home-made boat-hooks, the poles of which were fully ten feet long.

They heard the dull boom of a gun to seaward.