The Harbor Master Part 21

She stood beside him; and as he stared at her by the yellow light of the lantern all thought of treachery from that quarter faded away. His heart warmed and got a trifle out of hand. He could scarcely believe his senses, and for a moment forgot John Darling and the queer stories he had heard of Chance Along. All he realized was that his eyes and the lantern told him that the finest looking girl he had ever seen had come down the drook, all of her own free will, to pay him a visit.

"The skipper caught him an' tied him up in the store," whispered Mary, "an' now all the men in the harbor bes searchin' for the boat." Then she told the story of Flora Lockhart, and disclosed a plan for outwitting the skipper that had just come to her mind.

"Sure, ye bes a wonder," said George, who was as clay in her hands.

"Aye, we'll be putting the comather on to Black Denny Nolan, ye kin lay to that! Sure, it be a grand idee altogether!"

So they unloaded the bully and hid everything among the bushes.

"Now you must lay low," cautioned Mary, "an' I'll bring yer bully back to ye as soon as I kin--or maybe one o' the skipper's bullies in its place. Anyhow, I'll get to see ye agin to-morrow night. Lay low, now, an' don't be lightin' a fire."

As she stepped aboard the bully George's mind cleared a little.

"Ye bain't playin' any tricks on me, I do hope," he whispered. "Ye wouldn't be leavin' me here all alone by meself forever, widout me bully even, would ye now?"

"Ye kin trust me," said Mary. Then she shoved off into the darkness.

Half an hour later the keel of the bully touched the land-wash in the sheltered harbor of Chance Along. Mary Kavanagh stepped ash.o.r.e, laid the oar noiselessly inboard and set the bully adrift, and then made her cautious way up and into her father's cabin. Snow began to fall thickly and silently as she closed the door.

CHAPTER XVIII

MOTHER NOLAN DOES SOME SPYING

John Darling was sore, hungry and cold; but his heart was joyful and strong. He had been knocked over the head, and he had been robbed of the newly-recovered necklace and the reward of a thousand pounds; but he had found Flora, alive, evidently not ill-treated and not in any real danger save of oblivion, and with the memory of him clear in her heart. He had failed to get her away from the harbor; but he felt convinced that a way of escape for both of them would soon occur. He did not fear Black Dennis Nolan. The fellow was a man, after all. He knew that if he should come to any serious physical injury at the skipper's hands it would be in a fair fight. Also, he knew that Mother Nolan and Mary Kavanagh were on his side--were as anxious to get Flora out of the harbor as he was to take her out. But the planks upon which he lay were as cold and hard as ice; and at last he began to wonder if even his splendid const.i.tution would stand a night of this exposure, bound hand and foot, without serious results. He lay awake for hours, suffering in body but rejoicing in heart. At last, numb with cold, he sank into a half-doze. He was aroused by sounds at the door--the cry of a key turning an unoiled lock and the creak of rusty hinges. Then the welcome gleam of a lantern flooded to him along the frosty floor. The visitor was Bill Brennen. He stooped above the sailor and squinted at him curiously. Under his left arm he carried a caribou skin and several blankets.

"Lad," said he, "ye must be full o' the divil's own ginger to cross the skipper as ye done. Sure an' the wonder bes why he didn't kill ye dead!

But now that ye still be alive, him not killin' ye in the first flush, ye bes safe as Mother Nolan herself. A divil o' a woman that, entirely.

Saints in glory, me whiskers still aches desperate! Here bes a grand rug for ye to lay on, an' blankets to cover yerself wid. The skipper sent 'em. Kill a man he will, in fair fight; but it bain't in his nature to let any man go cold nor hungry in Chance Along."

He spread the caribou skin and one of the blankets on the floor and rolled John Darling on to them. Then he threw two more blankets over him and tucked them in. Next, he produced a flask from his pocket and unc.o.c.ked it.

"Skipper's orders," he said, and held the flask to the helpless one's lips.

"Now ye bes as snug as any marchant, what wid yer grand bed an' yer drop o' fine liquor in yer belly," he remarked. He turned at the door and said, "Some one will be bringin' ye grub in the mornin'. Good night to ye."

From that until morning, the prisoner on the floor, bound at wrist and ankle, rested more peacefully than Black Dennis Nolan in his father's bed; for the sailor was only sore in his muscles and bones, but the skipper ached in heart and soul. The skipper tossed through the black hours, reasoning against reason, hoping against hopelessness. The girl hated him and despised him! Twist and turn as he might, he could not escape from this conviction. Now he even doubted the power of the diamonds and rubies to win her, having seen that in her eyes which had brought all his dreams crumbling to choking dust. Pain had laid the devil of fury in him and aroused the imp of stubbornness. He would wait and watch. He was safe to keep them both in the harbor until the arrival of Father McQueen, in June; and perhaps, by that time, he would see some way of winning the girl. Should the necklace of diamonds and rubies fail to impress the girl, then he might bribe John Darling with it to leave the harbor. You see, the workings of the skipper's mind were as primitive as his methods of coping with mutineers.

The skipper left his bed and the house at the first gray of dawn, determined to search the coast high and low for a solution of the mystery of the stranger's arrival. He went down between the silent cabins, all roofed with new snow, and the empty snow-trimmed stages, and looked out upon the little harbor. What was that, just at the edge of the shadow of the rock to the right of the narrow pa.s.sage?--a boat, lump of wreckage or a shadow? Stare as he would, he could not determine the nature of the thing in that faint and elfin twilight; but it drew his eye and aroused his curiosity as no natural shadow of any familiar rock could have done. He dragged a skiff from under one of the stages and launched it into the quiet harbor and with a single oar over the stern sculled out toward the black object on the steel-gray tide. It proved to be a fine bully, empty and with the frozen painter hanging over the bow and trailing alongside.

"So this bes how he come to Chance Along--an' not man enough to moor his boat safe!" exclaimed the skipper.

The bully was as empty as on the day it had been built, save for one oar lying across the thwarts. Not even a spar and sail were aboard her. The man must be an absolute fool to set out along a dangerous coast, in a bad time of year, single-handed and without grub or gear, reflected the skipper. The thought that such a bungler as this stranger should be preferred to himself, intensified his pangs of humiliation. No girl who understood such things--no girl of that coast--would treat him so, he reflected, bitterly. He pulled the dripping painter aboard the skiff, made it fast around a thwart and towed the bully ash.o.r.e.

Mary Kavanagh had been astir as early as the skipper himself. She had gone first to the store. Peering through a window, she had made out the stranger's form on the floor, bulkily blanketed. From the store, she hastened to the skipper's house, saw his footprints pointing toward the land-wash, and stood with her hand on the latch until a skiff slid out into her line of vision from behind the drying-stages. She knew that the skipper was on his way to investigate the derelict bully. She opened the door then, entered quietly and went to Mother Nolan's room. The old woman was sitting up in bed with her night-cap a-tilt over one ear.

"Saints alive, Mary, what mischief bes afoot now?" asked Mother Nolan.

Mary drew close to the bed-side and leaned over to her confederate.

"The captain bes safe in the store, all rolled up in blankets," she whispered, "an'--an' I larned something last night that means as how we kin get 'em both away before long, wid luck. An' I played a trick on the skipper--so don't ye bes worryin' when he tells ye as how he's found the captain's boat. Give the word to the la.s.s to keep her heart up. Sure, we'll be gettin' the two o' them safe out o' the harbor yet."

"An' where bes Denny now? How'd ye get into the house?" asked the old woman.

"He bes out in a skiff this very minute, a-lookin' at the captain's boat where it bes driftin' 'round the harbor. Sure, an' that bes just where I wants him. An' now I'll be goin', Mother Nolan dear, for I bain't wis.h.i.+n' Denny to catch me here a-whisperin' t'ye so early in the mornin'

or maybe he'd get the idea into his head as how us two women bain't such harmless fools as what he's always bin takin' us for."

"Ye bes a fine girl, Mary Kavanagh," returned Mother Nolan, "an' I trusts ye to clear this harbor o' trouble. I'll be tellin' the good word to the poor la.s.s inside this very minute. Her heart bain't all diamonds an' pride, after all, as she let us know last night, poor dear."

Mary left them, and a minute later met the skipper on his way up from the land-wash.

"I's found the boat the stranger come in," said the skipper.

"Sure, an' so ye would, Denny, if it was to be found," replied Mary.

The young man eyed her gloomily and inquiringly until she blushed and turned her face away from him.

"Ye talks fair, Mary," he said. "Ye talks as if ye was a friend o' mine; but ye bain't always actin' that same way, these days. Last night, now, ye an' granny was sure fightin' agin me! I seed ye bat Nick Leary wid the leg o' the chair--an' I seed that dacent old woman a-hangin' to Bill Brennen's whiskers like a wildcat to the moss on a tree."

"An' why not, Denny Nolan?" retorted the girl. "Ye t'ree men was after murderin' that poor lad! D'ye think Mother Nolan was wantin' to see ye carried off to St. John's an' hung by yer neck? Sure, we was fightin'

agin ye. What hurt had that poor lad ever done to ye? He come to Chance Along for his la.s.s--an' sure, she was ready enough to be goin' away wid him!"

The skipper's face darkened. "Who saved her life from the wrack?" he cried. "Tell me that, will ye! Who salvaged her from the fore-top o' the wrack?"

Without waiting for an answer, he brushed past Mary and strode up to his house. The girl stood motionless for a little while, gazing after him with a flushed face, twitching lips and a flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt in her gray eyes.

"Poor Denny," she murmured. "His pride bes hurt more nor the heart of him!"

John Darling was not honored by a visit from the skipper that day; but Bill Brennen carried food to him, made up a fire in the stove, and even loosed his bonds for a few minutes upon receiving his word of honor that he would not take advantage of the kindness by trying to escape.

"What does Nolan intend to do with me?" asked Darling.

"Well, sir, it looks to me as how he bes figgerin' to keep ye in Chance Along till June. He bes t'inkin' as how the young lady may blow 'round to his own idee," replied Bill.

"And what is his idea?"

"As how he bes a better man nor ye be."

"But why does he figure to keep me until June? Why not until July, or August--or next Christmas?"

"Well, sir, ye see it bes this way wid him. Father McQueen, the dear, riverent gentleman--an' may he never die till I kills him, an' may every blessed hair on his head turn into a wax candle to light him to glory!--bes comin' back to Chance Along in June. The skipper bain't afeared o' any man in the world but his riverence."

John Darling smiled. "I should like to see Father McQueen," he said; "but I am afraid I must be going away from here considerably before the first of June."

Bill wagged his head. "Now don't ye be too sure, sir," he whispered. "Ye bain't dealin' wid any ignorant fisherman when ye bes dealin' wid Black Dennis Nolan. Sure, didn't he find yer bully this very mornin'!"