The Harbor Master

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

The main party were somewhat shaken. A few of them growled back at the skipper; but not quite loud enough to claim his attention to them in particular. Some eyed him apprehensively, while others broke open the ship's and passengers' boxes. They found minted money only in one of the captain's dispatch-boxes—two small but weighty bags of gold containing about two hundred sovereigns in all. This was the money which the dead captain had been armed with by his owners against harbor-dues, etc. The funds which the passengers must have possessed had doubtless been flung overboard and under along with the unfortunate beings who had clung to them. The sullen, greedy fellows began to count and divide the gold. They were slow, suspicious, grasping. The skipper, having fallen to a glowing silence at last, watched them for a minute or two with a bitter sneer on his face. Then he turned and set out briskly for Chance Along. The loyal and fearful party followed him, most of them with evident reluctance. A few turned their faces continually to gaze at the distributing of the gold and gear. The skipper noted this with a sidelong, covert glance.

"Don't ye be worryin', men. Ye'll have yer fill afore long, so help me Saint Peter!" he exclaimed. "No man who stands by me, an' knows me for master, goes empty!"

He did not speak another word on the way or so much as look at his followers. He strode along swiftly, thinking hard. He could not blink the fact that the needless deaths of the three men in the cabin of the Royal William had weakened his position seriously. He could not blink the ugly fact that the day's activities had bred a mutiny—and that the mutiny had not yet been faced and broken. It was still breeding. The poison was still working. In a fit of blind anger and unreasoning disgust he had fed the spirit of rebellion with gold. He had shattered with his foot what he had built with his hands. The work of mastery was all to do over again. He had taught them that his rights were four shares to one—and now he had given them all, thereby destroying a precedent in the establishing of which he had risked his life and robbing himself and his loyal followers at the same time. The situation was desperate; but he could not find it in his heart to regret the day's work; for there was the girl with the sea-eyes, lying safe in his own house this very minute! A thrill, sweet yet bitter, went through his blood at the thought. No other woman had ever caused him a choking pang like this. The remembrance of those clear eyes shook him to the very soul and quenched his burning anger with a wave of strangely mingled adoration and desire. He was little more than a fine animal, after all. The man in him lay passive and undeveloped under the tides of passion, craving, brute-pride and crude ambitions. But the manhood was there, as his flawless courage and unconsidered kindness to women and children indicated. But he was self-centred, violent, brutally masterful. Women and children had always seemed to him (until now) helpless, harmless things, that had a right to the protection of men even as they had a right to remain ashore from the danger of wind and sea. The stag caribou and the dog-wolf have the same attitude toward the females of their races. It is a characteristic which is natural to animals and boasted of by civilized men. Dogs and gentlemen do not bite and beat their females; and if Black Dennis Nolan resembled a stag, a he-wolf, and a dog in many points, in this particular he also resembled a gentleman. Like some hammering old feudal baron of the Norman time and the finer type, his battles were all with men. Those who did not ride behind him he rode against. He feared the saints and a priest, even as did the barons of old; but all others must acknowledge his lordship or know themselves for his enemies. To Black Dennis Nolan the law of the land was a vague thing not greatly respected. To Walter, Lord of Waltham, William the Red was a vague personage, not greatly respected. Walter, Lord of Waltham, son of Walter and grandson of Fitz Oof of Normandy; Skipper of Chance Along, son of Skipper Pat and grandson of Skipper Tim—the two barons differed only in period and location. In short, Black Dennis Nolan possessed many of the qualities of strong animals, of a feudal baron, and one at least of a modern gentleman.

The skipper was overtaken and joined by his young brother at the edge of the barrens above Chance Along. They scrambled swiftly down the path to the clustered cabins. At their own door Cormick plucked the skipper's sleeve.

"They was talkin' o' witches," he whispered. "Dick Lynch an' some more o' the lads. They says as how the comather was put on to ye this very mornin', Denny."

The skipper paused with his hand on the latch and eyed the other sharply.

"Witches, ye say? An' Dick Lynch was talkin', was he? Who did they figger as put the spell on to me?"

"The lass ye saved from the fore-top. Sure, that's what they all bes sayin', Denny. Mermaid, they calls her—an' some a fairy. A witch, anyhow. They says as how yer luck bes turned now—aye, the luck o' the entire harbor. 'Twas herself—the spell o' her—kilt the t'ree lads in the cabin, they be sayin'. Their talk was desperate black, Denny."

"'Twas the poor dead, drownded woman, an' their own cowardly souls, kilt 'em!"

"Aye, Denny, so it was, nary a doubt; but they shot ye some desperate black looks, Denny."