DEAD MAN'S DIAMONDS
Now I must hark back a few hours to the time when the skipper and his
lieutenants were on their way to the barrens behind Nolan's Cove to
safeguard the interests of the harbor by changing the hiding-place of
the common treasure of jewelry. They had not been gone half an hour from
Chance Along before Foxey Jack Quinn slipped from his cabin and glided,
like a darker shadow in the darkness, to the skipper's house. He was not
ignorant of his enemy's departure southward. He knew that both young
Cormick and old Mother Nolan were heavy sleepers; and, earlier in the
evening, he had seen something through the window of the guest-chamber
that had aroused his curiosity and a passion of avarice.
Foxey Jack Quinn was warmly clothed. His rackets and a light pack were
on his back and his pockets were stuffed with food and a flask of rum.
He was armed with a hatchet. He crouched beside the window of the empty
room for several minutes, listening intently and fearfully. At last he
wedged the strong blade of his hatchet between the sash of the window
and the frame and prised inward, steadily and cautiously. With a shrill
protest of frosted spikes the lower part of the sash gave by an inch or
two. He devoted another minute to listening, then applied the hatchet to
the left side of the window. He worked all round the sash in this way
and at last pushed it inward with both hands until it hung below the
sill by a couple of bent spikes. He thrust the hatchet in his belt and
entered the room. He put up his hand to the rafter that crossed the low
ceiling and so felt his way along to the middle of the room. Halting
there, he removed the fur mitten from his right hand and felt about
until his chilled fingers discovered a thin crack in the whitewash of
the rafter. The little square of dry wood came away in his fingers. Next
moment he held the leather-bound casket in his hand. He opened it and
felt the cold jewels which he could not see. Then he closed it, slipped
it into a pocket, replaced the square of wood in the beam and made his
cautious way back to the window. He crawled over the sill, turned and
tried to lift the sash upward and outward to its place. The sash came
up easily enough but the bent spikes would not hold. After a few minutes
of fruitless effort he turned away, leaving the window wide open. The
sky was black as the throat of a chimney. A breath of wind came from the
northwest. Foxey Jack Quinn was not weatherwise, however. He climbed the
path to the edge of the barrens and turned to the north.
"Diamonds white an' red," he muttered. "I seen 'em, and I knowed what
they was. Every little stone bes worth more nor all the fore-and-afters
on the coast. I bes a rich man now--richer nor the governor, richer nor
any marchant in St. John's--richer nor the king o' England, maybe. Holy
saints be praised! Never agin will I wet a line at the fishin' nor feel
the ache o' hunger in my belly. Denny Nolan will soon be cursin' the day
he batted me about like a swile."
His plans for the immediate future were clear in his mind but for the
more distant future they were vague, though rosy. He would make the ten
miles to Brig Tickle in less than three hours, and from there turn a
point or two westward from the coast and strike across country to the
head of Witless Bay. He had a cousin in Witless Bay and could afford to
rest in that cousin's house for a few hours. There he would hire a team
of dogs and make the next stage in quick time. Dennis Nolan, who would
not discover the theft of the diamonds until after sun-up, would be left
hopelessly astern by that time. So Quinn figured it out. On reaching St.
John's he would go to a shebeen that he knew, in a narrow and secluded
back street, and there rent a room. Then he would commence the business
of disposing of one of the diamonds. Just how he was to go about this he
did not know, but he felt sure that Mother McKay, who kept the shebeen,
would be able to give him some valuable advice on the subject. And after
that? Well, the prospects were rosy but vague. He would get word to his
wife in some way to move herself and the children to Witless Bay. He
would send her twenty dollars, and after that, for the rest of his life,
ten good dollars every month. As for himself, he would sail away to some
big city "up-along"--to Boston, New York or London--dispose of the
necklace stone by stone, buy a great house and live in idle luxury. He
would dress like a merchant, eat hearty every day, drink deep and sleep
warm. He had heard of such things--of men who never set their hands to a
stroke of work from year's end to year's end. He would live like a king
and drink like a lord and, like the good father and husband that he
firmly believed himself to be, he would send ten dollars to his wife
every month.
With such exalted dreams as these did Foxey Jack Quinn occupy his mind
as he hurried northward along the edge of the snowy barrens. He had
travelled about two miles when he suddenly became aware of the increased
force and coldness of the wind. Snow as dry as desert-sand and as sharp
as splintered ice blew against his face, stinging his eyes (one of which
was still half closed), and smarting the battered flesh of brow and
cheek. Then, for the first time, he realized that one of those dreaded
storms out of the northwest was approaching. But for the treasure in his
pocket he would have faced about and returned to Chance Along; but as it
was he drew his fur cap lower about his ears, wound a woollen scarf
around the lower part of his face and held doggedly on his way. The wind
lulled for a little while, quieting his apprehensions. His rackets were
on his feet now and he pushed along briskly over the pallid snow,
through the whispering dark. He had covered another mile before the
skirmishers of the storm rushed over him again out of the black
northwest. That bitter wind soaked through his heavy garments like water
and chilled him to the heart. Its breath of dry snow, embittered and
intensified by its rushing journey across frozen seas and a thousand
miles of frozen wilderness, blinded him, cut him and snatched at his
lips as if it would pluck life itself from his lungs. He turned his back
to it and crouched low, gasping curses and half-choked prayers to the
saints. Then the full fury of the storm reached him, the dark grew
pallid with flying snow-dust, and the frozen earth seemed to quake
beneath his hands and knees. For a minute he lay flat, fighting for
breath with his arms encircling his face. He knew that he must find
shelter of some description immediately or else die terribly of
suffocation and cold. Surely he could find a thicket of spruce-tuck near
at hand? He staggered to his feet, stood hunched for a second to get the
points of the compass clear in his mind, then plunged forward, fighting
through the storm like a desperate swimmer breasting the surf. He
thought he was moving straight inland where he would be sure to stumble
soon against a sheltering thicket. But the onslaught of the storm had
bewildered him. He struggled onward; but not toward the twisted clumps
of spruces. His eyes were shut against the lashing of the snow and he
held his arms locked before him across his mouth and nostrils. The wind
eddied about him, thick as blown spray with its swirling sheets of ice
particles. It struck him on all sides, lashing his face and tearing at
his back whatever way he turned.... A scream of horror rang out for an
instant and was smothered by the roaring of the storm. So the spirit of
Jack Quinn was whirled away on the tempest--God knows whither!--and the
poor body came to rest on the frozen land-wash far below the edge of the
blind, unheeding cliff.
The storm raged all day out of the northwest, and the folk of Chance
Along kept to their cabins and clustered around their little stoves.
Even Black Dennis Nolan did not venture farther than fifty yards from
his own door. He replaced the window of Father McQueen's room, said
nothing of his loss to Cormick and the old woman, and after breakfast
went out and fought his way along to Foxey Quinn's cabin. He found the
woman in tears.
"Where bes Jack?" he asked, drawing the door tight behind him and
standing with his hand on the latch.
"He bain't here," said the woman. "He was gone from the bed when first I
opened my eyes."
The skipper was a hard man in many ways, even then. Later, as he became
established in his power, the hardness grew in him with the passing of
every day. But always a tender spot could be found in his heart for
women and children.
"He was to my house last night," he said. "He bust in a windy an' tried
to rob me--aye, an' maybe he done it."
The woman covered her face with her rough, red hands and moaned like a
wounded thing.
"I bain't holdin' it agin' ye," continued the skipper. "I fight wid men,
not women an' childern. I fit Jack Quinn fair an' bate him fair. Let it
be! If ye wants for food, Polly--whenever ye wants for food an'
clothin'--send the word to me. I bes skipper in this harbor--aye, an'
more nor skipper."
He turned then and let himself out into the shrieking storm. Polly Quinn
stared at the door and the children clustered about her and pulled at
her shabby skirts.
"Aye, he tells true," she murmured. "Never a hard word did Mother Nolan
ever have from him. He was a good son to his mother an' the old skipper.
But them as crosses him--the holy saints presarve 'em! Men-folks must be
his dogs or his enemies. He batted me poor Jack nigh to death wid his
big hands."
She turned at last and fed the glowing stove. Then she set about getting
breakfast for herself and the children. There was enough hard bread in
the house to last the day. There was a pinch of tea in the canister.
Jack had drunk the wine from the wreck and taken away with him all that
had been left of the tinned meats which the skipper had brought over the
day before. The woman observed these things and gave some thoughts to
them. She glanced up at the blinding white tumult against the drifted
window, reflecting that her husband had taken the best food in the
house--enough to last him for two days, at least--and had left behind
him, for herself and three children, eight cakes of hard bread and a
pinch of tea. Her faded eyes glowed and her lips hardened.
Black Dennis Nolan brooded all day by the stove with his big hands
clasped idly between his knees. The grandmother sat near him, in a
tattered armchair, smoking her pipe and mumbling wise saws and broken
stories of the past.
"I bes a storm-child," she mumbled. "Aye, sure, wasn't I born a night in
winter wid jist sich a flurry as this one howlin' over Chance
Along--aye, an' wid a caul over me face. So I has the power o' seein'
the fairies." And then, "me man were bigger nor ye, Denny. Skipper Tim,
he were. Built the first fore-an'-after on this coast, he did." And
later--"There bain't no luck in diamonds. The divil bes in 'em."
Young Cormick sat on the other side of the stove, busily carving a block
of wood with a clasp-knife.