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[Illustration: "Oh let him go!" said a voice]
THE HARBOR OF DOUBT
BY
FRANK WILLIAMS
AUTHOR OF
THE WILDERNESS TRAIL
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
G. W. GAGE
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1915, by
W. J. WATT & COMPANY
CONTENTS
I MALICIOUSLY ACCUSED 1
II THE RED PERIL 10
III THE TEST 20
IV REFUGEES 29
V STARTLING NEWS 37
VI THE ISLAND DECIDES 49
VII A STRANGER 61
VIII JIMMIE THOMAS'S STRATEGY 73
IX ON THE COURSE 79
X A MYSTERY 87
XI IN THE FOG BANK 95
XII OUT OF FREEKIRK HEAD 110
XIII NAT BURNS SHOWS HIS HAND 117
XIV A DISCOVERY 124
XV THE CATCH OF THE ROSAN 128
XVI A STAGGERING BLOW 133
XVII TRAWLERS 143
XVIII TREACHERY 152
XIX ELLINWOOD TAKES A HAND 161
XX AMONG THE HOME FOLKS 171
XXI A PRISONER 179
XXII A RECOVERED TREASURE 189
XXIII SURPRISES 199
XXIV THE SIREN 212
XXV THE GUILT FIXED 222
XXVI WETTING THEIR SALT 241
XXVII THE REWARD OF EVIL 249
XXVIII THE RACE 262
XXIX A FATAL LETTER 278
XXX ELSA'S TRIUMPH 294
XXXI PEACE AND PROSPERITY 303
THE HARBOR OF DOUBT
CHAPTER I
MALICIOUSLY ACCUSED
"Let them think what they like. If I had died I would have been a
hero; because I lived I suppose there is nothing in the history of
crime that I have not committed."
Young Captain Code Schofield sprang out of the deep, luxurious chair
and began to pace up and down before the fire. He did not cast as much
as a glance at the woman near him. His mind was elsewhere. He had
heard strange things in this talk with her.
"Well, captain, you know how it is on an island like this. The tiny
thing of everyday life becomes a subject for a day's discussion. That
affair of six months ago was like dropping a tombstone in a
mud-puddle--everything is profoundly stirred, but no one gets
spattered except the one who dropped it. In this case yourself."
Schofield stopped in his tracks and regarded his hostess with a look
that was mingled surprise and uneasiness. She lay back in a
_chaise-longue_, her hands clasped behind her head, smiling up at the
young man. The great square room was dark except for the firelight,
and her yellow dress, gleaming fitfully in it, showed the curving
lissomeness of her young body.
"Mrs. Mallaby," he said, "when you say clever things like that I
don't know what to do. I'm not used to it." He laughed as though
half-ashamed of the confession.
"Appreciate them," she directed shortly with a fleeting glance from
her great dark eyes.
"Do you demand all my time?" he asked and flushed. The well-turned
compliment caught her unawares and she admitted to herself that
perhaps she had underrated this briny youth who was again beginning to
interest her extremely.
But with the sally he seemed to have forgotten it and recommenced
pacing the floor, his hands in his pockets and his brows knit. His
mind had gone off again to this other vastly important thing.
She noticed it with a twinge of vexation. She vastly preferred the
personal.
"What was it old Jed Martin said to you this afternoon?" he asked.
"That if the opinions of old sailors were of any account Nat Burns
could get up a pretty good case against you for the loss of the _May
Schofield_."
"I suppose he meant his own opinion. He's an old sailor now, but if he
lives to be a hundred and fifty he'll never be a good one. I could
beat his vessel if I was on a two-by-four with a pillow-case for a
mains'l. I can't understand why he has turned against me."
"It isn't only he, it's--"
"I know it!" he burst out passionately. "It's the whole island of
Grande Mignon from Freekirk Head to Southern Cross. Not a man nor
woman but has turned against me since that awful day.
"Great God! what do they think? That I wrecked the poor old _May_ for
the fun of the thing? That I enjoyed fighting for my life in that sea
and seeing the others drown with my very eyes? Don't they suppose I
will carry the remembrance of that all my life? My Heaven, Elsa, that
was six months ago and I have just begun to sleep nights without the
nightmare of it riding me!"
"Poor boy!"
Her voice calmed him like a touch on a restive horse, and yet he
unconsciously resented the fact that it did. "I haven't been blind,
Code, and I have heard and seen this thing growing. It is hard for a
fisherman to lose his ship and not suffer for it afterward at the
hands of inferior sailors. I've known you all my life, Code, and I
believe in you now just as I did that day in school you took the
whipping I should have got for passing you a note.
"You haven't heard the last of the _May Schofield_, and you won't
until you lay the ghost that has come out of its grave. But whatever
you do or wherever you are, I want you to remember that I stand ready
to help you in every way I can. All this"--she swept her arm about the
richly furnished room--"is worthless to me now that Jim is gone,
unless I can do some good for those I like. Please, Code, will you
feel free to call on me if you need help?"
The flush that had receded returned with a flood of color that made
his face beneath its fair hair appear very dark.
"Really, Elsa," he stammered, "that's awfully handsome of you, but I
hope things won't go so far as that. I can never forget what you have
said."
Elsa Mallaby had always been like that to him. Even when she married
"Hard-Luck" Jim Mallaby she had always seemed to regard Code Schofield
as the one man in Freekirk Head. But Jim, being too busy with his
strange affairs, had not noticed.
Jim it was who, after twenty years of horrible poverty and ill-luck,
had caught the largest halibut ever taken off the Banks and made
thousands of dollars exhibiting it alive. And it was this same Jim
who, for the remaining ten years of his life, turned to gold
everything he touched.
Mallaby House was his real monument, for here, on the great green hill
that overlooked the harbor, he had erected a mansion that made his
name famous up and down the Bay of Fundy. And here, seven years ago,
he had brought Elsa Fuller as his bride--Elsa Fuller who was the belle
of Freekirk Head, and had been to Boston to boarding-school.
It was to Mallaby House that Code Schofield had come to dinner this
night. He had not wanted to come and had only agreed when she bribed
him with a promise of something very important she might reveal.
The revelation was hardly a pleasure. Nothing had been a pleasure to
him since that day six months ago when his old schooner, dismasted and
leaking in a gale, had foundered near the Wolves, two sharp-toothed
islands near Grande Mignon. Four islanders had been lost that day, and
he alone had lived through the surf.
"What else did old Jed Martin say, Elsa?" he asked suddenly.
She knitted her brows and stared into the fire. Why would he always go
back to that?
"He said that the _May Schofield_ should have been able to live out
that gale easily if she had been handled right, old as she was. She
_was_ pretty old, wasn't she?"
"Fifty years. She was twenty when dad got her--he sailed her
twenty-eight and I had her for two."
"You got a good deal of insurance out of her, didn't you, Code?"
"Ten thousand dollars--her full value."
"And you bought the _Charming Lass_ with that, didn't you?"
"Yes--that and two thousand that dad had saved. Why?"
"Old Jed Martin said something about that, too."
Schofield's face paled slightly and his mouth closed tightly,
exhibiting the salience of his jaw.
"So that's it, eh? Thinks I ran her under for the insurance--the old
barnacle. Is that around the island, too?"
"I guess it must be, or I shouldn't have heard about it. You didn't,
of course, did you, Code?"
"I hardly expected you would ask that, Elsa. Why, I loved that old
schooner like I love--well, my mother."
"I believe you, Code; you don't need to ask that. I just wanted to
hear you deny it. But you know there were some queer things about her
sinking just then, when she was supposed to be in good condition. Nat
Burns--"
"Ha! So he is in it, too. What does he say?"
"He says that her insurance policy was just about to run out. Is that
so?"
"Yes."
There was a tone of defiance in his answer that caused her to look up
at him quickly. His blue eyes were narrowed and his face hard.
"And it wasn't such a hard gale, was it?"
"No. I've weathered lots worse with the _May._ I can't explain why she
sank."
"And Michael Burns, who was aboard of her, was the insurance
inspector, wasn't he?"
"Yes." The reply was more a groan than a spoken word. He laughed
harshly.
"I can see Nat Burns's hand in all this," he cried. "Why didn't I
think of it before? He will dog me till I die because his father lost
his life aboard my schooner. Oh, I had no idea it was as bad as
this!"
He sank down into the chair again and stared gloomily into the fire.
"I'm glad I came to-night," he said at last. "I didn't know all these
things. How long has this talk been going round?"
"Not long, Code." Her voice was all sympathy. "It is simply the result
of brooding among our people who have so little in their lives. I'm
sorry. What will you do? Go away somewhere else?"
He looked at her quickly--scorn written upon his face.
"Go away," he repeated, "and admit my own guilt? Well, hardly. I'll
stay here and see this thing through if I have to do it in the face
of all of them."
"Splendid, Code!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Just what I knew you
would say. And, remember, I will help you all I can and whenever you
need me."
He looked at her gratefully and she thrilled with triumph. At last
there was something more in his glance than the purely impersonal; he
had awakened at last, she thought, to what she might mean to him.
There followed one of those pauses that often occur when two people
are thinking intensely on different subjects. For perhaps five minutes
the cheerful fire crackled on uninterrupted. Then, suddenly
recollecting himself, Code sprang to his feet and held out his hand.
"Half-past ten," he said, glancing at the mahogany chime-clock on the
mantelpiece. "I must really go. It has been kind of you to have me up
to-night and tell me all these--"
"Inner secrets of your own life that you never suspected before?" she
laughed.
"Exactly. You have done me a service like the good old friend you
always were."
She took his hand, and he noticed that hers was a trifle cold. They
started toward the hallway.
From the broad veranda of Mallaby House the view extended a dozen
miles to sea. Beneath the hill on which the mansion stood the village
of Freekirk Head nestled against the green. Now the dim, yellow
lights of its many lamps glowed in the darkness and edged the crescent
of stony beach where washed the cold waters of Flag's Cove.
To the left at one tip of the crescent the flash of Swallowtail Light
glowed and died like the fire in a gigantic cigarette. To the right,
at the other, could be seen the faint lamps of Castalia, three miles
away.
For a minute they stood drinking in the superb beauty of it all. Then
Elsa left him with a conventional word, and Schofield heard the great
front door close softly behind her.
Silently he descended the steps, when suddenly from the town below
came the hideous, raucous shriek of a steam-whistle.
He stood for a minute, astonished, for the whistle was that of the
steamer _Grande Mignon_, that daily plied between the island and the
mainland. Now the vessel lay at her dock and Code, as well as all the
island, knew that her wild signaling at such an hour foreboded some
dire calamity.
Swiftly buttoning his coat, he started on a run down the winding,
rocky path that led from Mallaby House. He cast one more glance toward
the roofs of the village before he plunged among the pine and
tamarack, and in that instant caught a red glow from the general
direction of the fish wharfs.