The Harbor Master Part 8

What could she mean by her maid? Her daughter? No, for she was scarcely more than a girl herself--and in any case, her daughter would not be a Frenchwoman. As they reached the broken edge of the barrens above Chance Along she spoke for the third time.

"In London I sang before the Queen," she said, this time without raising her pallid lids. Her lips scarcely moved. Her voice was low and faint, but clear as the chiming of a silver bell. "And now I go to my own city--to New York--to sing. They will listen now, for I am famous. You will be well paid for what you have done for me."

The skipper could make little enough of this talk of singing before the Queen; but he understood the mention of making payment for his services, and his bitter pride flared up. He gripped the edge of the hammock roughly.

"Would ye be payin' me for this?" he questioned. "Would ye, I say? Nay, not ye nor the Queen herself! I have money enough! I bes master o' this harbor!"

She opened her wonderful, clear, sea-eyes at that, full upon his flushed face, and he saw the clear cross-lights in their depths. She regarded him calmly, with a suggestion of mocking interest, until his own glance wavered and turned aside. He felt again the surging of his heart's blood--but now, across and through the surging, a chill as of fear. The flush of offended pride faded from his cheeks.

"Of course I shall pay you for saving my life," she said, coolly and conclusively.

The skipper was not accustomed to such treatment, even from a woman; but without a word by way of retort he steadied the hammock in its descent of the twisting path as if his very life depended upon the stranger's comfort. The women, children and very old men of the harbor--all who had not gone to the scene of the wreck save the bedridden--came out of the cabins, asked questions and stared in wonder at the lady in the hammock.

The skipper answered a few of their questions and waved them out of the way. They fell back in staring groups. The skipper ran ahead of the litter to his own house and met Mother Nolan on the threshold.

"Here bes a poor young woman from a wrack, granny," he explained. "She bes nigh perished wid the cold an' wet. Ye'll give her yer bed, granny, till the fire bes started in Father McQueen's room."

"Saints save us, Denny!" exclaimed Mother Nolan. "First it bes diamonds wid ye, an' now it bes a young woman. Wracks will sure be the ruin o'

ye yet, Denny Nolan! This way, b'ys, an' give me a sight o' the poor lamb. Lay her here an' take yer tarpaulin away wid ye. Holy saints fend us all, but she bes dead--an' a great lady at that!"

The stranger opened her eyes and looked at the old woman. Her wonderful eyes seemed to bewitch Mother Nolan, even as they had bewitched the skipper. The old dame stared, trembled and babbled. Turning to the gaping men, including Denny, she cried to them to get out where they belonged and shut the door after them. They obeyed, treading on each other's heels. Even the skipper departed, though reluctantly.

"May every hair o' yer head turn into a wax candle to light ye to glory," babbled the old woman, as she unwound the coa.r.s.e blankets from about the girl's unresisting body. The other smiled faintly.

"I don't want to be lighted to glory--just now," she said. "I must sing in New York--to my own people--just as I sang before the Queen in London. But now I am so cold--and so tired."

Mother Nolan gaped at her.

"Glory be!" she whispered. "Eyes like fairies' eyes an' a voice like a mermaid's! An' the little white hands of her, soft as cream! An' the beautiful rings! Glory be!"

CHAPTER VII

THE GOLD OF THE "ROYAL WILLIAM"

The skipper and his four companions returned to the cliff above the wreck, the skipper striding ahead, silent, deep in a mental and spiritual unrest that was thought without reflection. The others followed, whispering among themselves but afraid to question their leader. The wind had fallen to a breeze by the time they reached the point of the cliff overlooking the slanted deck of the stranded s.h.i.+p.

Also, the seas had lost much of their height and violence, and the tide was ebbing. The group on the cliff's edge eyed the skipper inquiringly, furtively, as he joined them. He strode through them and looked down at the wreck. His face lightened in a flash and his dark eyes gleamed.

"What did I tell ye!" he cried. "Now she lays steady as a house, all ready to be gutted like a fish. Pa.s.s a couple o' lines this way, men.

Take in the slack o' the hawser an' make her fast to yonder nub o'

rock. Nick Leary, follow after me wid that block an' pulley. Bill, rig yer winch a couple o' yards this way an' stake her down. Keep ten men wid ye--an' the rest o' ye can follow me. But not too close, mind ye!

Fetch yer axes along, an' every man o' ye a line."

Three minutes later, the skipper was sliding down the foremast, with Nick Leary close above him, another man already on the cross-trees and yet another in mid-air on the hawser. The skipper reached the slanted deck and slewed down into the starboard scuppers, s.n.a.t.c.hed hold of a splintered fragment of the bulwarks in time to save himself from pitching overboard, steadied himself for a moment and then crawled aft.

Leary, profiting by the skipper's experience in the scuppers, made a line fast to the b.u.t.t of the foremast, clawed his way up the slant of the deck to port, scrambled aft until he was fairly in line with the stump of the mainmast, and then let himself slide until checked in his course by that battered section of spar. Taking a turn around it with his line, he again clawed to port, and scrambled aft again. His second slide to starboard brought him to the splintered companionway of the main cabin. Here he removed the end of the rope from his waist and made it fast, thus rigging a life-line from the b.u.t.t of the foremast aft to the cabin for the use of those to follow. It had been a swift and considerate piece of work. The men on the cliff cheered. Nick waved his hand to the cliff, shouted a caution to the man at that moment descending the foremast, and then swung himself down into four feet of water and the outer cabin.

"Where be ye, skipper?" he bawled.

"This way, Nick. Fair aft," replied the skipper. "Keep to port or ye'll have to swim. I bes in the captain's berth; an' here bes his dispatch box, high an' dry in his bunk."

Nick made his way aft, through the length of the outer cabin as quickly as he could, with the water to his chin as he stooped forward in his efforts toward speed, entered an inner and smaller cabin by a narrow door and finally swam into the captain's own state-room. He grasped the edge of the berth in which the skipper crouched.

"h.e.l.l! I bes nigh perished entirely wid the cold, skipper!" he cried.

"Then swallow this," said the skipper, leaning down and tilting a bottle of brandy to the other's lips. "I found it right here in the bunk, half-empty; aye, an' two more like it, but wid nary a drop in 'em.

There, Nick, that bes enough for ye."

Leary dragged himself up beside the skipper. As the deadlight had been closed over the port, the state-room was illumined only by a gray half-gloom from the cabin.

"This bunk bes nigh full o' junk," said Nolan. "The skipper o' this s.h.i.+p must ha' slept in the lower bunk an' kept his stores here. Here bes t'ree boxes wid the s.h.i.+p's gold an' papers, I take it; an' a medicine-chest, by the smell o' it; an' an entire case o' brandy, by Garge! Sure, Nick, it bes no wonder he got off his course! Take another suck at the bottle, Nick, an' then get overside wid ye an' pa.s.s out these boxes."

Nick was still deriving warmth from the bottle when a third man entered the state-room, with just his head and neck above water.

"She bes down by the starn desperate, skipper," he said. "Saints presarve me, I bes ice to the bones!"

At a word from the skipper, the last arrival took the bottle from Leary.

Others reached the scene of action and the three iron boxes and the case of brandy were soon safe on deck. From there they were winched up to the top of the cliff.

"We'll break into the lazaret when the tide bes out," said the skipper.

"She'll drain out, ye can lay to that, wid a hole in her as big as the roof o' a house."

They salvaged a few cases of tinned provisions from the steward's pantry. Five state-rooms were situated on either side of the main or outer cabins. They looted those to port first, where the water was only a few feet deep, finding little but clothing and bedding and one leather purse containing thirty pounds in gold. The skipper put the purse into a submerged pocket, and sent the other stuff to the deck, to be winched aloft. The cabins on the starboard side contained but little of value. A few leather boxes and bags were sent up unopened. The water was still shoulder-deep to starboard. The door of the fifth room on the starboard side was fastened. The skipper pulled and jerked at it, then lowered his head beneath the water, and saw that it was locked on the inside. But the lock was a light one, and the wood of the door was not heavy. He called for a capstan-bar; and in spite of the fact that he had to strike blindly under several feet of water, the lock was soon shattered. By this time, a dozen men were cl.u.s.tered around, their curiosity and greed uncooled by the cold water to their shoulders.

"There bes somethin' wort' salvin' in there, ye kin lay to that!" said one.

"The pa.s.sengers' store-room, I bes a-t'inkin'," said another.

"Naught but the sail-locker," said a third. "D'ye look to find gold an'

dimins in every blessed corner o' every blessed s.h.i.+p?"

At that moment the skipper pulled the narrow door open to its full extent. The water inside swirled out to fill the eddy made by the opening of the door; and then, slow, terrible, wide-eyed, floating breast-high in the flood, a woman drifted out of the narrow room into the midst of the expectant men. Death had not been able to hide the agony in her staring eyes, or dull the lines of horror in her waxen, contorted face. She floated out to them, swaying and bowing, one hand clutched and fixed in the torn bosom of her dress, a pendant of gold and pearl swinging from each ear.

A groan of wordless horror went up from the wreckers. For a moment they stared at the thing rocking and sidling in their midst, with grotesque motions of life and the face and hands of a terrific death; and then, as one man, they started to splash, beat and plunge their way to the companion-steps. The water was set swirling by their frantic efforts, in eddies and cross-currents which caught the dead woman and drew her, pitching and turning heavily, in the wakes of the leaders and elbow to elbow with some of the panic-stricken fellows in the second line of retreat. They knew the thing was not a ghost; they knew the thing was not alive, and could not harm them with its pitiful, stiff fingers; they knew it for the body of a woman who had been drowned in her cabin--and yet the horror of it chilled them, maddened them, melted their courage and deadened their powers of reasoning. Even the skipper felt the blind terror of the encounter in every tingling nerve. The water was deep, the deck sloped beneath their feet, and the way to the flooded steps of the companionway seemed a mile long. The fellows who suffered the touch of those dead elbows that seemed to reach out to them beneath the churning water yelled wildly, lost their footing and power to advance at one and the same moment, and soused under, clutching blindly at their comrades.

This brought others down and under who believed that the fingers gripping them were those of the poor corpse. Screams and yells filled the cabin and drifted up to the astounded men on the cliff. Heads vanished; legs and arms beat the imprisoned water to spume; fists and feet struck living flesh; and one poor, frantic fool clutched the unconscious cause of all this madness in his arms. Then the skipper, steadied from his first insanity of fear by the signs of disaster, lowered his head deliberately, plunged forward and downward, and swam under water for the companion. In his pa.s.sage he wrenched floundering bodies aside and kicked and struck at floundering legs and arms. Coming to the surface and sinking his feet to the deck at the same moment, he grasped a step of the companionway and hauled himself out of the water, as if the devil were nipping at his heels. Turning on an upper step, he reached down, clutched two of the struggling fellows by the collars and dragged them up from the battling smother. One of them sprang on up the companion without so much as a glance at his rescuer, reached the deck with a yell, and started forward on the run without pausing to lay a hand on the life-line. His course was brief. The list of the deck carried him to the starboard. His foot caught in a splinter of shattered bulwark and he pitched overboard, head first and with terrific force, to the black rocks and surging seas. That was the last time Dan Cormick was seen alive--and the sight of him springing from the companion and plunging to his death struck horror and amazement to the souls of the men on the cliff.

Below, the skipper was doing his utmost to still the tumult and drag the men to safety. They were the men of his harbor--a part of his equipment in life--and therefore he worked like a hero to save them from themselves and one another. His young brother was safe on the cliff; so his fine efforts were not inspired by any grander emotion than that felt by the shopkeeper who fights fire in the protection of his uninsured stock-in-trade. There were men below whom he needed, but none whom he loved even with the ordinary affection of man for humanity. The skipper yanked the men to the steps as fast as he could get hold of them, dragged them up to the level of the deck, and left them sprawled. All were breathless; some were cut and bruised; Nick Leary's left cheek had been laid open from eye to jaw in some way. The shouting and yelling were now over, and several husky fellows, ashamed of the recent panic, helped the skipper at his work. When the task of rescue was at last finished, the flooded cabin had given up three corpses besides that of the woman--four corpses and a dozen wounded men.

The bodies of the wreckers were hauled up to the top of the cliff, amid prayers, curses and groans of distress. The fellows on sh.o.r.e demanded to know who had killed them--and why? Knives were drawn. The brother of one of the dead men swore that he was ready and eager to cut the heart out of the murderer. The lads on the wreck caught something of all this; but it did not cool their desire to get ash.o.r.e. Those who had the use of their limbs swarmed up the foremast and crossed over to the cliff. The first to step ash.o.r.e was in grave danger for a half-minute; but he managed to throw some light on the thing that had taken place in the flooded cabin. Others landed, the whole story was told and knives were returned to their sheaths. The skipper, the seriously injured and the dead woman remained on the deck. The skipper was in a black mood. He knew his people well enough to see that this unfortunate affair would weaken his power among them. They would say that the saints were against his enterprises and ambitions; that his luck was gone; that he was a bungler and so not fit to give orders to full-grown men. He understood all this as if he could hear their grumbled words--nay, as well as if he could read the very hearts of them. He turned to Nick Leary. Nick had already bandaged his face with a piece of sail-cloth.

"Where bes the medicine-chest? Was it sent aloft?" asked the skipper.

"Nay, skipper, 'twas left below--in the captain's berth," replied Nick; his voice shook from pain and loss of blood.

"Ye bes cut desperate bad," said the skipper. "I'll go fetch the medicine-chest an' fix ye up wid plaster an' dacent bandages. Who says his leg bes broke? Ye, Bill Lynch? I'll fix yer leg, b'y, when I git the chest."

He looked up at the crowd on the cliff and roared to them to lower away some brandy for the wounded men.