Now the fire sent branches out from the burning wharf along the low frames where some of the season’s miserable catch was drying in the open air after salting. The fish curled and blackened in the fierce heat.
Only two men were not in the bucket brigade. They were Nailor and Thomas, who stood watching the destruction of their whole property. They knew the squire had done well in saving the village rather than their own buildings. It was the tacit understanding in Freekirk Head that a few should lose rather than the many.
Code Schofield, from his perch on the Boughton roof-tree, looked down again to where he had last 18 seen his mother. Once more he distinguished the tall figure with its white face looking anxiously up at him, and he waved his hand reassuringly. Then his eye was caught by two other figures that lurked in the first shadows farther up the King’s Road. A moment later he made sure of their identity.
They were Nellie Tanner and Nat Burns.
For years there had been a dislike between the Burnses and the Schofields. Old Jasper Schofield, Code’s father, and Michael Burns had become enemies over the same girl a quarter of a century before, and the breach had never been healed. Old Captain Jasper had won, but he had never forgotten, and Michael had never forgiven.
Quite unconsciously the feud had been passed on to the children of both (for Michael had married within a few years), and from school-days Code and Nat had been the leaders of rival gangs.
When they became young men they matched their season’s catches and raced their father’s schooners. They were the two natural leaders of the Freekirk Head young bloods, but they were never on the same side of an argument.
Schofield wondered why Nat Burns was not at the fire, as usual attempting to make himself leader of the battle without doing much of the work, and now the reason was apparent. He preferred to pursue his courting under the eyes of the village rather than 19 to obey the unwritten law of service. And he was with Nellie Tanner!
Unlike most youths, there had never been a time in Code’s life when he had passed the favor of his affections around. Since the time they were both five Nellie Tanner had supplied in full all the feminine requirements he had ever desired. And she did at this moment. But Nat Burns had seen a great deal of her in the last three months, he remembered, taking advantage of Code’s desperate search for fish.
Once in this train his thoughts bore him on and on. Memories, speculations, and desires crowded his mind, and he forgot that beneath him the roof of Boughton’s store was burning more and more briskly.