Читать книгу The Harbor Master - Theodore Goodridge Roberts - Страница 8

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"Four shares still on the table," repeated the skipper. "Well, lads, one bes for Black Dennis Nolan."

He glared around at the circle of eager, watchful, shaggy faces set against the wall of gloom that hemmed in the table and the ill-trimmed lamp.

"Aye, skipper, that bes right," muttered Nick Leary.

"And another bes for the skipper who feeds ye all from his store."

Again he glared around, letting his dark, dauntless eyes dwell for a second on each face. "And t'other two bes for the lad who larned you how."

With that, he swept the four piles of coins into a pocket of his coat. One of the men grunted. The skipper turned his black but glowing regard upon him. Another cursed harshly and withdrew a step from the table. The skipper jumped to his feet.

"Who says nay?" he roared. "Who gives the lie to my word? I bes skipper here—aye, an' more nor skipper! Would ye have one gold guinea amongst the whole crew o' ye, but for me? Would ye have a bite o' food in yer bellies, but for me? An' now yer bellies bes full an' yer pockets bes full, an' ye stand there an' say nay to my aye!"

He pulled two pistols from beneath his coat, cocked them deliberately and stared insolently and inquiringly around.

"What d'ye say to it, Bill Brennen?" he asked.

Bill Brennen shuffled his big feet uneasily, and eyed the pistols askance.

"Thank ye kindly, skipper. Ye speaks the truth," said he.

"An' ye, Nick Leary?"

"Ye bes skipper here, sure—aye, and more nor skipper. But for ye we'd all be starved to death wid hunger an' cold," said Nick.

"An' what says the rest o' ye? Who denies me the right to four shares o' the money?"

"Me, Dennis Nolan!" said Dick Lynch. "I denies ye the right."

"Step up an' say it to my face," cried the skipper.

"Aye, step up an' give it to him straight," said one of the men. "Step up, Dick, I bes wid ye."

"Who said that?" roared the skipper.

"Sure, 'twas me said it," growled one, Dan Keen.

"Be there four o' ye denies me the right to the money in me pocket?" asked the skipper.

"Aye, there bes four o' us."

"Then step out, the four o' ye."

Dick Lynch, Dan Keen and two others shuffled to the front of the group. Black Dennis Nolan looked them over with fury in his eyes and a sneer on his lips. He called up Bill Brennen and Nick Leary, and gave a pistol to each of them, and exchanged a few guarded words with them.

"Dick Lynch, Dan Keen, Corny Quinn an' Pat Lynch, stand where ye be," he said. "Ease back along the wall, the rest o' ye. I'll larn ye who bes skipper an' master o' this harbor! I'll larn ye if I bes as good as the four o' ye or not."

He slipped off his coat, with the weight of coined gold in the pockets of it, stepped swiftly around the end of the table and sprang furiously upon the four men who had denied his right to four shares of the loot.

"I'll larn ye!" he roared.

Three of them, all husky fellows, stood their ground; but the fourth turned and dashed clear of the field of instruction. He was a small man, was Corny Quinn, and lacked the courage of his convictions.

The skipper struck the group of three with both feet off the ground. They staggered, clutched at him, aimed blows and curses at him. A terrible kick delivered by Dan Keen missed its intended object and brought Pat Lynch writhing to the floor, and before Dan fully realized his mistake something as hard as the side of a house struck him on the jaw and laid him across the victim of his error. Dick Lynch was more fortunate than his fellow-mutineers—for half a minute. He closed with the furious skipper and clung tightly to him, thus avoiding punishment for the moment. The two were well matched in height and weight; but the skipper was the stronger in both body and heart. Also, he seemed now to be possessed of the nerve-strength of a madman. He lifted his clinging antagonist clear of the floor, shook him and wrenched at him, and at last broke his hold and flung him against the wall. Dick landed on his feet, steadied himself for a moment and then dashed back to the encounter; but he was met by the skipper's fist—and that was the end of the fight.

Black Dennis Nolan returned to the table and sat down behind the smoky lamp. There was a red spot on his forehead from a chance blow, and the knuckles of both big hands were raw. He breathed heavily for a full minute, and glared around him in silence.

"Pick 'em up," he said, at last. "The lesson I larned 'em seems to lay cold on their bellies. Give 'em rum, Burky Nolan—ye'll find a case of bottles behind the stove. Drink up, all o' ye. T'row some water in their faces, too."

His orders were promptly obeyed. He took the pistols from Bill Brennen and Nick Leary, and laid them on the table, and then picked up his coat and put it on.

"Now, men, maybe ye know who bes master of this harbor," he said. "If any one o' ye, or any four o' ye, bain't sure, say the word an' I'll pull off me coat again an' show ye. Well now, we'll git back to business. The jewels bes still hid in the swamp. They bain't no manner o' use to us till we sells 'em. I'll do that, men, bit by bit, in St. John's. The grub an' liquor we took bes all in the pit under this floor. Ye kin come every day an' tote away what ye wants of it. The wines and brandy bes for them who has sick folks an' old folks to feed. Lift the trap, Bill, an' let them help theirselves."

Bill Brennen stooped and hoisted a trap-door in the middle of the floor. The skipper left the table, lamp in hand.

"Help yourselves, men," he invited. "Take whatever ye fancies."

They came up meekly. Even the three who had so lately been disabled obeyed the invitation, leaning upon their companions. The water and rum had revived them physically, but their spirits were thoroughly cowed. The skipper held the lamp over the square hole in the floor.

"Two at a time, men," he cautioned. "Bill, light a candle an' pass it down to 'em."

Half an hour later the store was empty, save for the skipper and the inanimate gear. The blankets had been removed from the windows, and the lamp extinguished. The skipper sat beside the deal table from which he had distributed the gold, staring thoughtfully at his raw knuckles. The pistols still lay on the table. He pushed them to one side, scooped the gold from his pockets, spread it out and counted it slowly and awkwardly. Then he produced a canvas bag, stowed the gold away in it and tied the mouth of it securely.

"A rough crew," he muttered. "They needs rough handlin', most o' the time, an' then a mite o' humorin' like ye t'row fish to a team o' dogs after ye lash the hair off 'em. Aye, a rough crew, an' no mistake—but Black Dennis Nolan bes their master!"

He left his chair, stepped across the floor, and lifted the trap that led to the cellar. He descended, returning in a minute with a bottle of wine and two tins of potted meat.

"I'm t'inkin' it bes about time to t'row some fish to that dog Jack Quinn," he murmured.

He went out, leaving the bag of gold on the table, and locked the door behind him. Though he left the gold he did not leave the pistols. Under his arm he carried the wine and the tinned meat. He went straight to Foxey Jack Quinn's cabin, and entered without knocking on the door. Quinn was sitting by the little stove with his head untidily bandaged. One pale, undamaged eye glared fiercely from the bandages. The woman was seated close to the only window, sewing, and the children were playing on the floor. All movement was arrested on the instant of the skipper's entrance. The children crouched motionless and the woman's needle stuck idle in the cloth. Quinn sat like an image of wood, showing life only in that one glaring, pale eye.

"How bes ye feelin' now, Jack?" asked the visitor.

The hulking fellow by the stove did not speak, but the hand that held his pipe twitched ever so slightly.

"Orders be orders," continued the skipper. "The lads who obeys me fills their pockets wid gold—an' them who don't get hurt. But I bain't a hard man, Jack Quinn. Ye did yer best to heave me over the edge o' the cliff—an' most would have killed ye for that. Here bes wine an' meat for ye an' the wife an' children."

He laid the bottle and tins on a stool near the woman. Quinn's glance did not waver, and not a word passed his swollen lips; but his wife snatched up one of the tins of meat.

"The saints be praised!" she cried. "We bes nigh starvin' to deat' wid hunger!"

"'Twas me give it to ye, not the saints," said Black Dennis Nolan, "an' there bes more for ye where it come from."

He turned and went out of the cabin.

"I'll fix him yet," mumbled Foxey Jack Quinn.

The woman gave no heed to the remark, for she had already opened one of the tins of choice meat and was feeding the children from her fingers.

The skipper returned to the store, took up his bag of gold and went home. He lived with his grandmother, old Kate Nolan (commonly known in the harbor as Mother Nolan) and with his young brother Cormick. The cottage was the largest in the harbor—a grand house altogether. It contained three rooms, a loft, and a lean-to extension occupied by a pig and a dozen fowls. The skipper found the old woman squatted in a low chair beside the stove in the main room. This room served as kitchen, dining-room, general reception, and the skipper's bed-room. A ladder led up to the loft from one corner. Of the remaining rooms on the ground floor one was where the grandmother slept, and the other one was kept spotless, musty and airless for the occasional occupation of good Father McQueen, the missionary priest, who visited Chance Along three times a year. Cormick slept in the loft.

Mother Nolan glanced up from the red draft of the stove at her grandson's entrance. She held a short clay pipe in one wrinkled hand. She regarded the youth inscrutably with black, undimmed eyes, but did not speak. He closed the door, faced her and extended the heavy bag of coins.

"Granny, we bes rich this minute; but we'll be richer yet afore we finishes," he said. "This bag bes full o' gold, Granny—full o' coined English gold."

"Out o' the wrack?" she queried.

"Aye, it was in the ship, Granny."

The old woman puffed on her pipe for a few seconds.

"An' what else come out o' the wrack, Denny?"

"Diamonds an' rubies an' pearls, the wine ye drank last night an' the fancy grub ye et to-day. 'Twas a grand wrack altogether, Granny."

Mother Nolan wagged her gray head and returned her gaze to the red draft of the stove. "'Twas grand wine," she muttered. "Wracker's wine! Dead man's wine!"

"Nay, Granny, there ye bes wrong. Not a lad aboard her was killed nor drownded."

"Then how come ye by the gold an' diamonds, Denny?"

The skipper laughed.

"Sure, Granny, I tricked 'em!" he exclaimed. "I made use o' my wits—an' the harbor bes rich."

"Saints pity ye, Denny! Rich? The folk o' this harbor bain't intended for riches. Take a care, Denny, for the devil bes in it. Saints presarve us! No good never did come to this harbor out o' wracks, Denny. Me own father was drunk wid rum out o' a wrack when he fell over the edge o' the cliff, an' broke his neck on the land-wash. It was for a case o' brandy out o' a wrack Pat Walen an' Micky Nolan fit wid skulpin'-knives till Pat was killed dead."

The skipper laughed again and expanded his chest.

"There bain't no fightin' over wracks now," he said. "I bes skipper now, Granny. Do this, do that, says I—an' it's done! An' I gives out the shares to the men like I was master o' a sealin'-ship after a trip to the ice—one share to every man o' the crew an' four to meself. There bain't no shares for ship an' owners in this business, Granny."

"An' where be the diamonds?" asked the old woman.

"Hid in the marsh, safe an' sound till I takes 'em to St. John's," replied the skipper.

"There bain't no luck in diamonds," mumbled the old woman, "an' there bain't no luck in wracks. The devil bes in the both o' them, Denny."

The skipper passed through his grandmother's bed-room and entered the cold and un-aired chamber that was reserved for the use of Father McQueen. He closed the door behind him, bolted it stealthily and then tiptoed across the floor to the bulging chimney and empty fire-place. He knelt on the drafty hearth, placed the bag of gold beside his knee, and thrust both arms into the black maw of the chimney. After a minute of prying and pulling he withdrew them, holding a square, smoke-smudged stone in his hands. Laying this on the hearth, he took up the canvas bag and thrust it into a cavity at the back of the chimney that had been ready for the reception of just such a treasure for some time. Then he replaced the stone and scrambled to his feet. He glanced furtively at the one small window which lighted the room, then moved noiselessly to the centre of the floor and put up his right hand to the whitewashed beam that crossed the low ceiling. His fingers searched delicately for a full minute; and then he lowered his hand, holding a small square of dry wood. The beam had been skilfully hollowed at this point. From the cavity he took a small box bound in red leather—the same small box that he had found among the sheets and blankets of a berth in the wreck. He opened it and gloated over a necklace of twelve diamonds and fourteen rubies glinting, flashing and glowing on a bed of white satin. He fondled the wonderful stones with his blunt finger-ends. So he stood for a long time, breathing heavily, his black eyes glowing like the rubies and glinting like the diamonds.

"A fortune," he murmured. "Aye, houses an' ships, liquor, food an' sarvants. Holy saint! I bes richer nor any marchant in St. John's!"

At last he closed the box, put it back in the cavity overhead, and returned the small square of wood to its place. He looked around the room. The fading light of the winter day was gray at the window. The curtained bed was a mass of gloom; a white Christ on a cross of ebony gleamed above the narrow chimney-shelf, between two candlesticks of dull brass; the floor, with its few rough mats, was as cold as the frozen snow outside. The skipper felt the chill of the place in his sturdy bones. He shot a glance at the crucifix. It, too, was an offering from the sea. His father had told him how it had come ashore in the hand of a dead woman, thirty years ago. Now the carven image of the Saviour seemed to gleam out from the black of the cross and the shadowy wall as if with an inner illumination. Black Dennis Nolan made the sign with an awkward and unaccustomed finger, and then went swiftly from the room.

The skipper, Bill Brennen and Nick Leary left their cabins stealthily about midnight, met on the snowy barren above the harbor, and tramped southward to the vicinity of Nolan's Cove. They worked for a little while in a clump of spruce-tuck, then moved off to another thicket about half a mile away, and there worked again.

"There bes some men in this harbor I wouldn't trust as far as I could t'row 'em over my back," said the skipper.

Bill and Nick agreed with him. The skipper glanced up at the starless sky.

"There'll be snow by sun-up," he said.

"Aye, skipper, a desperate flurry out o' the nor'-west," replied Brennen.

"D'ye mean wind, too?"

"Aye, skipper, mark that!"

All three felt a breath on their faces like the very essence of cold. They turned northward and set out on the homeward way. All were snug in their beds long before the first pale hint of dawn. The icy draft from the northwest was a little stronger by that time, and it puffed a haze of dry and powdery snow before it. The night was full of faint, insistent voices. The roofs of the cabins snapped and creaked as if icy fingers were prying them apart. A sharp crackling sound came up from the harbor, where the tide fumbled at the edges of black ice. A dull, vast moaning that was scarcely a sound at all—something as vague, yet mighty as silence itself—drifted over the barrens and over the sheltered habitations out of the northwest.

When the skipper awoke in the morning the "flurry" was rolling over the brink of the barren, and down upon Chance Along in full force. The skipper piled dry wood—birch and splinters of wreckage—into the round stove, until it roared a miniature challenge to the ice-freighted wind outside. The bucket of water on the bench in the corner was frozen to half its depth. He cut at it with a knife used for skinning seals, and filled the tea-kettle with fragments of ice. His young brother Cormick came stiffly down the ladder from the loft, and stood close to the stove shivering.

"It bes desperate weather, Denny," said the lad. "Sure, I near froze in my blankets."

"Aye, Cormy, but we bes snug enough, wid no call to go outside the door," replied the skipper. "We has plenty o' wood an' plenty o' grub; an' we'll never lack the one or t'other so long as I bes skipper o' this harbor."

"Aye, Denny, we never et so well afore ye was skipper," returned Cormick, looking at his brother in frank admiration. "Grub—aye, an' gold too! I hears ye took a barrel o' money off that wrack, Denny."

"An' there'll be more wracks, Cormy, an' we'll take our pickin's from every one," said the skipper. "Times bes changed, lad. The day was when we took what the sea t'rowed up for us; but now we takes what we wants an' leaves what we don't want to the sea."

At that moment the voice of old Mother Nolan sounded fretfully from the next room.

"Denny! Cormy!" she called. "I bes fair perishin' to death in my bed. The wind bes blowin' an' yowlin' t'rough this room like the whole end o' the house was knocked out."

The skipper, who was as gentle with his old grandmother and as kind to his young brother as the best man in the world could have been, crossed the kitchen immediately and opened the door of the old woman's chamber. Mother Nolan was sitting up in her bed with a blanket on her thin, bent shoulders, and a red flannel night-cap on her gray head.

Her small face was pinched by cold and age, but her black eyes were alive and erect.

"The mats be squirmin' and flappin' on the floor like live fish," she exclaimed. "Saints presarve all poor creatures abroad this day on sea or land! They'll be starved to death wid the cold, Denny, for bain't I most blowed out o' my bed right in this grand house?"

The skipper realized that the room was colder than the middle apartment of the cabin had any right to be. He went to the window and examined it. The small frame was as tight in the wall as a dozen spikes and a liberal daubing of tar could make it. It had never been opened since the building of the house.

"The wind blows under Father McQueen's door like spray from the land-wash," said the old woman.

"'Twill be comin' down the chimbly," said Dennis, aware of the tide of icy wind low about his feet. He crossed the room and opened the door of the dismal chamber reserved for the use of the missionary. The sash of the window hung inward, the woodwork splintered and the spikes twisted, admitting a roaring current of wind and powdery snow. With a cry of consternation and rage the skipper sprang in, banged and bolted the door behind him, and went straight to the rafter across the middle of the ceiling. He removed the square of wood—and the hollow behind it was empty! For a moment he stood with his empty hand in the empty hiding-place, unable to move or think because of the terrific emotions which surged through him. At last he went over to the chimney and examined it. The bag of gold was in its place.