FATHER MCQUEEN'S RETURN
Black Dennis Nolan and Bill Brennen brought the loose jewels from their
hiding-place to the harbor. The skipper carried the dispatch-box, and in
his pockets he had John Darling's neat little pistols, each good for two
shots--the latest thing in pistols at that time. They went straight to
Cornelius Lynch's cabin, where the leading grumblers were assembled. The
skipper was about to kick open the door and stuff the jewels into their
insatiable maws when a guarded, anxious voice at his elbow arrested him
with one foot drawn back. The voice was that of Mary Kavanagh.
"Whist!" said Mary. "Bes that yerself, Denny Nolan?"
"Aye, sure it be," returned the skipper.
"I heard a sound on the cliff, to the north," said Mary. "The sound o' a
horse nickerin' an' men cursin' it for the same."
"A horse?" queried the skipper. And then, "On the cliff to the north?
Where the divil has ye been to, Mary Kavanagh?"
"Whist! Hark to that!" exclaimed the girl.
"Sure, skipper, 'twas somethin' up back yonder," whispered Bill Brennen.
"It sounded to meself like a gun slammin' agin a rock."
"Would it be that stranger lad?" queried Dennis, anxiously.
"Nay, he bes safe enough," said Mary. "But hark to that, now! There bes
a whole crew up yonder."
The skipper opened Cornelius Lynch's door, but not with his foot as he
had formerly intended.
"Turn out an' git yer guns, men. There bes trouble a-foot," he said,
quietly. Then, laying a hand on Mary's shoulder, he whispered, "Git Pat
an' yerself to my house an' fasten up the doors. It bes a strong house,
lass, an' if there bes any gunnin' ye'll be safe there."
"Ye needn't be worryin' for Flora Lockhart," said Mary. "She bes safe
enough--herself an' the captain--a-sailing away in the bully this
half-hour back."
The skipper's hand tightened on her shoulder; but she did not flinch. In
the light from the open door he stared at her--and she stared back at
him, glance for glance. There was astonishment in his eyes rather than
anger, and a question rather than condemnation. He was about to speak
when the smashing report of a musket rang out from the slope and a slug
splintered the edge of the open door. The skipper pushed Mary away from
him.
"Run! Run to the house!" he cried.
Mary vanished into the darkness. Men clustered around the skipper,
sealing-guns, pistols, cutlasses and clubs in their hands, their
grumblings forgotten in the prospect of a fight. The open door was shut
with a bang.
"Follow me!" shouted the skipper, dropping the dispatch-box of loose
jewels to the trampled snow and pulling his pistols from his pocket.
The men of Chance Along and Pierre Benoist's ruffians met at the foot of
the steep slope, among the upper rank of cabins. All doubts as to the
intentions of the visitors were dispelled from the skipper's mind by a
voice shouting, "Git inside the houses, lads, an' pull up the floors.
There bes where ye'll find the stuff. Git into the big house. _It_ be
fair full o' gold an' jewels."
The voice was that of Dick Lynch. The skipper knew it, and his pistols
flashed and banged in his hands.
The light of the stars, dimmed by a high, thin veil of mist, was not
good enough to fight scientifically by. After the first clash it was
almost impossible to know friend from foe at the length of an arm.
Single combats, and cursing knots of threes and fours, staggered and
swatted among the little dwellings. The work was entirely too close for
gun-work, and so the weapons were clubbed and the affair hammered out
like hot irons on an anvil.
After ten minutes of it the skipper found himself in front of his own
door, with a four-foot stick of green birch in his hands, and something
wet and warm trickling from his forehead into his left eye. Three men
were at him. Bill McKay was one of them and Pierre Benoist another.
McKay fought with a clubbed musket, and the French sailor held a dirk in
one hand and an empty pistol in the other. The third prodded about in
the background with a cutlass. He seemed to be of a retiring
disposition.
The skipper defended his position heroically; but after two minutes of
it the musket proved heavier than the club of birch, and he received a
crack on his left shoulder that put one arm out of action. The
Frenchman ducked and slipped in; but the skipper's boot on his
collar-bone set him back for a moment and sent the knife tinkling to the
ground. But the same movement, thanks to the little wad of snow on the
heel of his boot, brought the skipper to the flat of his back with a
bone-shaking slam. The clubbed musket swung up--and then the door flew
open above his upturned face, candle-light flooded over him and a
sealing-gun flashed and bellowed. Then the threatening musket fell of
its own weight, from dead hands--and the skipper went to sleep with more
stars twirling white and green fire across his inner vision than he had
ever seen in the sky.
It was daylight when Black Dennis Nolan next opened his eyes. He was in
his own bed. He felt very sick in the stomach, very light in the head,
very dry in the mouth. Old Mother Nolan sat beside the bed, smoking her
pipe.
"Was it ye let off the old gun out the door?" he asked.
"Nay, 'twas Mary done it," replied Mother Nolan, blinking her black eyes
at him.
"An' where bes Mary now?" he asked.
"In me own bed. Sure, when she was draggin' ye into the house, didn't
some divil jab her in the neck wid a great knife."
The skipper sat up, though the effort spun a purple haze across his
eyes, and set a lump of red-hot iron knocking about inside his skull.
"Bes she--dead?" he whispered.
"Nay, lad, nay, she bain't what ye'd call dead," replied the old woman.
The skipper rolled to the floor, scrambled to his feet, reeled across
the kitchen and into the next room, and sank at the side of Mary's bed.
He was done. He could not lift himself an inch higher; but a hand came
down to him, over the side of the bed, and touched his battered brow.
A week later, Mary Kavanagh was able to sit up in Mother Nolan's bed;
and the skipper was himself again, at least as far as the cut over his
eye and the bump on top of his head were concerned.
The skipper and Mother Nolan sat by Mary's bed. The skipper looked
older, wiser and less sure of himself than in the brisk days before the
raid.
"I bes a poor man now," he said. "Sure, them robbers broke t'rough this
harbor somethin' desperate! Didn't the back o' the chimley look like
the divil had been a-clawin' it out?"
"Quick come and quick go! Ye bes lucky, lad, they didn't sail away wid
yer fore-an'-after," said Mother Nolan.
"Aye, Granny; but it do beat me how ever they come to dig up the
kitchen-floor."
"Sure, an' they didn't," said Mary. "'Twas meself done that--an' sent
the red an' white diamonds away wid Flora's man. 'Twas himself ye took
'em from, Denny Nolan."
"An' a good thing, too," said Mother Nolan. "Sure, ye sent all the
curses o' Chance Along away together, Mary dear! There bain't no luck in
wracked gold, nor wracked diamonds--nor wracked women! Grub an' gear bes
our right; but not gold an' humans."
The skipper gazed at the girl until her eyes met his.
"Was ye workin' agin me all the time?" he asked, quietly.
"Nay, Denny, but I was workin' _for_ ye--all the time," she whispered.
"Sure she was," said Mother Nolan, puffing at her pipe. "Aye--an' many's
the time 'twas on me tongue to call her a fool for her trouble, ye was
that bewitched an' bemazed, lad."
The skipper stared at the floor for a long time, in silence. At last he
said, "Wid the way ye was workin', Mary, the wonder bes to me what for
ye risked the knife in yer neck to save me life from the Frenchman."
"Denny, ye bes still a fool!" exclaimed Mother Nolan. "When you bain't
one manner o' fool ye bes another! What for? d'ye ask! Well, what for?"
"Sure, I was only wonderin'," said the man, glancing shyly and hopefully
at the girl in the bed.
* * * * *
Father McQueen reached Chance Along early in June. He found plenty of
work awaiting him, including six masses for the newly-dead, and the
building of the church. The general tone of the harbor impressed him as
being strangely subdued. Even Black Dennis Nolan seemed less vivid and
dominant in his bearing; but in spite of this change in him, he refused
to put off his wedding even for the glory of being married in the new
church.
In spite of a scar on her round, white neck, Mary Nolan was the
grandest-looking, sweetest bride that had ever been seen in Chance
Along. Denny thought so, and old Barney Keen said it, and Mother Nolan
proved it by admitting that even she herself had not cut such a figure,
under similar circumstances, fifty years ago. And on the morning after
the wedding, the skipper and Mary set out on their honeymoon to St.
John's, aboard the fore-and-after, with a freight of salvaged cargo
under the hatch instead of thiefed jewels and gold. Back in the harbor
the men unmoored their skiffs for the fishing, even as their fathers had
done since the first Nolan and the first Leary spied that coast. They
grumbled a little, as was their nature; but there was no talk of mutiny
or treason. The red tide of greed had ebbed away with the passing of the
sense of possession, and the fear of bewitchment had faded away with the
departure of the innocent witch.
THE END.
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End of Project Gutenberg's The Harbor Master, by Theodore Goodridge Roberts