The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Harbor of Doubt, by Frank Williams This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Harbor of Doubt Author: Frank Williams Illustrator: G. W. Gage Release Date: August 27, 2009 [EBook #29817] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HARBOR OF DOUBT *** Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net “Oh let him go!” said a voice THE HARBOR OF DOUBT BY F R A N K WILLIA M S AUTHOR OF THE WILDERNESS TRAIL ILLUSTRATIONS BY G . W. G A G E NEW YORK G R O S S E T & D UN LA P 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 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 2 3 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. 4 5 6 7 “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. CHAPTER II THE RED PERIL Five minutes of plunging and slipping brought him down to the main road that gleamed a dim gray in the blackness. A quarter of a mile east lay the wharfs, the general store, and some of the best dwellings in Freekirk Head. Ahead of him in the road he could see lanterns bobbing, and the illuminated legs of the men who carried them running. Behind he heard the muffled pound of boots in thick dust, and the hoarse panting of others racing toward the scene of the trouble. The frantic screeching of the steamer’s whistle (that was not yet silent) had done its work well. Freekirk Head was up in arms. Instinctively and naturally Code Schofield ran, just as he had run from his father’s house since he was ten years old. His long, easy stride carried him quickly over the ground, and he passed two or three of those ahead with lanterns. They shouted at him. “Hey, what’s the trouble?” panted one. “Know anything about it?” 8 9 10 “No, but it might be the wharfs,” he replied, without stopping. He veered out to the edge of the road so as to avoid any more queries. He looked with suspicion now on all these men. Who of them, he wondered, was not, in his heart, convicting him of those things Elsa Mallaby had mentioned? His straightforward nature revolted against the hypocrisy in men that bade them treat him as they had done all his life, and yet think of him only as a criminal. Suddenly the dull red that had glowed dimly against the sky burst into rosy bloom. A great tongue of fire leaped up and licked the heavens, while floating down the brisk breeze came the distant mingling of men’s shouts. As he passed a white wooden gate he heard a woman on the porch crying, and a child’s voice in impatient question. Then for the first time he lost sight of his own distress and thought of the misery of his whole people. It was August, and the Indians should soon be coming from the mainland to spear porpoises. The dulce-pickers on the back of the island reported a good yield from the rocks at low tide, but outside of these few there was wretchedness from Anthony’s Nose to Southern Cross. The fish had failed. A hundred years and more had the Grande Mignon fishermen gone out with net and handline and trawl; and for that length of time the millions in the sea had fed, clothed, and housed the thousand on the island. When prices had been good there were even luxuries, and history tells of men who, in one haul from a weir, have made their twenty-five thousand dollars in an hour. This was all gone now. The fish had failed. Day after day since early spring the men had put to sea in their sloops and motor-dories, trawling and hand-lining from twenty miles out in the Atlantic to four and a half fathoms off Dutch Edge. The result was the same. The fish were poor and few. Even at Bulkhead Rip, where the sixty-pounders played among the racing tides, there was scarcely a bite. A fisherman lives on luck, so for a month there was no remark upon the suddenly changed condition. But after that, as the days passed and not a full dory raced up to Bill Boughton’s fish stand, muttered whispers and old tales went up and down the island. It was recalled that the fish left a certain Norwegian coast once for a period of fifty years, and that the whole occupation of the people of that coast was changed. Was that to be the fate of Grande Mignon? If so, what could they do? Extensive farming on the rocky island was impossible, and not one ship had ever been built there for the trade. Where would things end? So it had gone until now, in the middle of August, the people of Freekirk Head, Seal Cove, and Great Harbor, the main villages along the front or Atlantic side of the island, were face to face with the question of actual life or death. So far the season’s catch was barely up to that of a good month in normal times; credit was low, and salting and drying were almost useless, for the people ate most of their own catch. Things were at a standstill. And now the fire on top of all! Captain Code Schofield thought of all these things as he ran along the King’s Road toward the fire. Now he was almost upon it, and could see that the fish stand and wharf of the two wealthiest men in the village were burning furiously. The roar of the flames came to him. A hundred yards back from the water stood Bill Boughton’s general store, and next it, in a row, dwellings; typical white fishermen’s cottages with green blinds and a flower-filled dory in the front yard. The King’s Road divided at Bill Boughton’s store, the branch leading down to the wharfs, while the main road went on to Swallowtail Light. Schofield plunged down the branch into the full glare of the fire, where a crowd of men had already gathered. As good luck would have it there was not a vessel tied up to the stand, the whole fleet being made fast to its moorings in the bay. Code’s first duty when he started running had been to make sure that his Laughing Lass was riding safely at her anchorage. The burning wharfs faced south. The brisk breeze was southeast and bore a promise of possible rain. The steamer Grande Mignon, after giving the first warning, had steamed away from her perilous dockage to a point half a mile nearer the entrance to the bay, and now lay there shrieking until the frowning cliffs and abrupt hills echoed with the hideous noise. “How’d it happen?” asked Schofield of the first man he met. “Dunno exactly. Cal’late some tanks in the oilroom caught first. Can’t do much with them wharfs, I guess.” “Who’s in charge of things here?” “The squire.” Schofield hurried away in search of Squire Hardy, head man of the village, and local justice of the peace. He found him working like a Trojan, his white whiskers ruffled into a circle about his face. “Lend us a hand here, Code,” yelled the squire, who with three other men was attempting to get a great circular 11 12 13 14 horse-trough under a huge pump with a handle long enough for three men to lay hold of. Schofield fell to with a will and helped move the trough into place. The squire set the three men to the task of filling it and then went to Code. “Any chance to save those wharfs, d’ye think?” “No, squire. Better leave them and the fish-houses and work on Boughton’s store and the cottages. They’re right in the path of the wind. It’ll be tough on Nailor and Thomas to lose their stand and houses, but you know what will happen if the fire gets into the dwellings.” “I thought so all along––curse me if I didn’t!” yelled the judge, and then, turning toward a crowd of men who were looking apprehensively here and there, he shouted: “All hands with the buckets now, lively!” Suddenly the basement doors of Boughton’s store were thrown open and a huge, black-bearded man with a great voice appeared there. “Buckets this way!” he bellowed, in a tone that rose clearly above the roar and crackle of the fire. As the men reached him he handed out the implements from great stacks at his feet––rubber buckets, wooden buckets, tin and iron buckets, new, old, rusty and galvanized. It was Pete Ellinwood, the fire marshal of the village and custodian of the apparatus. Because in the hundred or more years of its existence there has never been water pressure in Grande Mignon, the fighting of a fire there with primitive means has become an exact and beautiful science. A few bold spirits had disputed the wisdom of Squire Hardy’s orders to let the wharf and fish-house burn, and had attempted to give them a dousing. In less than five minutes they had retreated, singed and hairless, due to a sudden explosion of a drum of oil. “Play on Bill Boughton’s store!” came the order. Already an iron ladder reached to the eaves of the building. Two men galloped up its length, dragging behind them another ladder with a pair of huge hooks at the end. Clinging like monkeys, they worked this up over their heads and up the shingles until the hooks caught squarely across the ridge-pole of the house. Then, on hands and feet, they trotted up this and sat astride the ridge-pole. One of these was Code Schofield. Other men now swarmed up the ladders, until there was one on every rung from the ground to the top of the house. Below, a line of men extended from the foot of the ladder to the great circular horse-trough. Another line extended from the opposite side of the store also to the horse-trough, where three men worked the great pump. Back twenty yards, along the King’s Road, a white-faced row of women and children stood, ready to rush home and move their furniture into the fields. Code, looking down, made out his mother and returned her friendly wave. Their house was across the road not a hundred feet away. With a muffled roar another drum on the pier exploded. A great wave of molten fire shot out in the breeze, and the shingles on Bill Boughton’s store, parched with the drought of a month, burst into quick flame. The squire ran back to the water-trough. “Dip!” he yelled. Big Pete Ellinwood, with the piles of buckets beside him, seized one and twitched it full. “Pass!” screamed the squire as it came up dripping. Ellinwood’s great arm swung forward to meet the arm of the man a yard away. The bucket changed hands and went forward without losing a drop. Up it went swiftly from one to another, to the eaves, to the two men at the top. 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 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. 15 16 17 18 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 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. Suddenly the man beside him on the ridge-pole shook his arm. “Say, Code!” he cried. “What’s that burnin’ over there? I didn’t know the fire had gone across the street.” Schofield looked up quickly and followed the direction of the other’s arm that pointed through the trees to the opposite side of King’s Road and a little to westward. “Good Lord!” he cried excitedly; “it’s my own place, and my mother is all alone down there. Quick! Send somebody up here! I’m going!” CHAPTER III THE TEST The man behind him climbed to the ridge-pole and Code began the descent, necessarily slow and careful because the ladders were loaded with men passing buckets. When he reached the ground he started for home on the run. Opposite Boughton’s general store was another shop that made a specialty of fishermen’s “oilers,” boots, and overalls. Two houses to the westward of that was the old Schofield place, a low, white house surrounded by a rickety fence and covered with ivy. Once he reached the middle of the road Code saw that he had been mistaken in the location of the fire, for his mother’s place was intact. The flame was coming, however, from the house next but one––Bijonah Tanner’s place. A crowd was gathering in the yard that was overgrown with dusty wire-grass, and the squire was pushing his way through to take charge. Code knew that only two days before Captain Bijonah and his wife had sailed in the Rosan to St. John’s for lumber, leaving Nellie alone in charge of the three small Tanners. He wondered where they all were now. He found his mother on the edge of the crowd that was helping to save the furniture, and learned that Nellie and young Burns had already arrived and were doing what they could. From the first it was apparent that the place was doomed, for although there were plenty of men eager to form a bucket brigade, the supply of water was limited, and most of the buckets were at the larger fire. But the squire was working wonders, and enlisted Code to help him. In fifteen minutes the whole roof and attic were ablaze, and the men turned their attention to wetting down the near walls of the houses on each side. All the valuables and most of the simple furniture had been saved. At the earliest moment Schofield escaped from the squire and sought out Nellie. He found her, hysterical, surrounded by a group of women, and hovered over by Nat Burns. With each hand she held a child close to her. “Bige! Where is little Bige?” she was crying as Code came up. “Tom and Mary are here, but I’ve lost Bige. Oh, Nat! Where is Bige?” “Bless me if I know,” stammered Burns weakly. “Last I saw of him he was under that cherry-tree where you told him to stay until you got the others. It wa’n’t more’n five minutes ago I seen him there. He must be around somewheres. I’ll look.” Without another word he hurried off in a frantic search, looking to left and right, behind every bush, and among the crowd, bellowing the boy’s name at the top of his voice. Code walked up to the frantic girl and went straight to the point. “Hello, Nellie!” he said. “Where do you cal’late little Bige might be? I hear you’ve lost him.” 19 20 21 22 “Yes, I have, Code. I stood him under that cherry-tree and told him not to move. When I got back he was gone. He was seven, and just old enough to run around by himself and investigate things. Oh, I’m so afraid he’s gone––” “Listen!” Code’s sharp, masterful tone put a sudden end to her sobbing. “Was there anything in the house he valued much?” Suddenly she drew in her breath sharply. “Yes, yes,” she cried, “his mechanical train. He asked me if I had got it and I said I had. He must have gone over to the furniture and found it hadn’t been brought down. Oh, Code, Code––” “What’s the matter, Nellie?” It was Nat Burns’s hard voice as he elbowed roughly past Code and bent solicitously over the girl. He had heard her last words and the pleading in them, and his brow was dark with question and anger. “Did you find him, Nat?” queried Nellie in an agony of suspense. “No, I don’t know where the little beggar can be,” he replied; “I’ve––” The girl screamed and fainted. “What’s the matter here?” shouted Burns. “What’s the matter with her?” “The boy went back into the house for his toy engine and hasn’t come out again,” said Code, facing the other and regarding him with a level eye. There was a dramatic pause. After Nat’s proprietary interest in Nellie and her affairs it was distinctly his place to make the next move. Everybody felt it, and Code, subconsciously realizing this, said nothing. It required another moment for the situation to become clear to Burns. Then, when he realized what alternatives he faced, he gradually grew pale beneath his deep tan and looked defiantly from one to another of the group about him. “Rot!” he cried suddenly. “The boy can’t have gone back. It wasn’t five minutes ago I saw him under the cherry-tree. I haven’t looked in this direction. Wait! I’ll be back in a minute!” And again he was off in his frantic search, his voice rising above the roar of the fire. Code waited no longer. Snatching up a blanket from the ground, he raced toward the burning house. The lower floor was still almost intact, but the upper floor and the roof were practically consumed. The danger lay not in entering the house, but in remaining in it, for although the roof had fallen in, yet the second floor had not burned through and was in momentary danger of collapse. The spectators did not know what was in Code Schofield’s mind until he had burst into the danger zone. Then, with the blanket wound about his arm and shielding his face he plunged toward the open doorway. It was as though he stood suddenly before the open door of a vast furnace. The blast of heat seemed an impenetrable force, and he struggled against it with all his strength. One more look, a mighty effort, and he was in the temporary shelter of the doorway. He drew a long breath and plunged forward. He knew the plan of the Tanner house as he knew his own, and he remembered that in the rear was a room where the children played. The hall ran straight back to the door of this room; but there was no egress from the rear except through the kitchen, which adjoined the play-room. The heat that beat down upon his head made him dizzy, and he could not see for the smoke that filled the hall. Instinctively he went down on his hands and knees, discarding the blanket, and crawled toward the rear. He had scarcely reached the closed door of the play-room when, with a thunderous roar, the ceilings at the front of the house fell in, cutting off any escape in that quarter. He knew that at any moment the rest of the ceilings would collapse. Half-strangled with the increasing smoke, he staggered to his feet and lunged against the door, forcing it open. The dim light from the one square-paned window showed a small form huddled on the floor, the mouth open, and a tiny locomotive gripped in one hand. A rush of smoke and flame followed the violent opening of the door, and Code felt himself growing giddy. A swift glance behind showed a wall of fire where the hall had once been, and for the first time he realized the seriousness of the task he had taken upon himself. But there was no fear. Rather there came a sense of gladness that a fighter feels when the battle has at last come to close grips. He swept the small form of Bige up into his arms and leaped to the window that was built low in the wall and without weights. To raise it and manipulate the catch was out of the question. With all his strength he swung his foot against the pane squarely in the middle. Panes and frame splintered outward, leaving the casement intact except for a few jagged edges of glass. Then, suddenly, as he dropped the boy to the ground outside, there came a blast of fire on the back draft created by the opening. Singed and strangling, with a last desperate effort he threw himself outward and fell on his shoulders beside little Bige. Men who had heard the crash of glass when the window went out rushed forward and dragged man and boy to 23 24 25 26 safety. A quarter of an hour later, his head and neck bandaged with sweet-oil, Code made his way weakly to where Nellie sat among her belongings cradling in her arms the boy whom the doctor had just brought back to consciousness. “He’s all right, is he?” asked Schofield. She smiled up at him through her tears. “Yes, the doctor says it was just too much smoke. Oh, Code, how can I thank you for this? And you are hurt! Is it bad? Can’t I do anything?” She struggled to her feet, solicitude written on her face, for the moment even forgetting little Bige, who had begun to howl. “No,” said Schofield, “you can’t do anything. It isn’t much. I’m only glad I succeeded. Don’t think anything about it.” “Father and mother will never forget this, and I’m sure will do what they can to make it right with you.” He looked at her as though she had struck him. Never in his life had she used that tone. Before the mute query of his eyes she turned her head away. “What do you mean––by that?” he faltered, hardly knowing what he said. “Nothing, Code, only––only––” She could not finish. “What has happened, Nellie?” he began, and then halted, his gaze riveted upon her hand. A single diamond glittered from the dirt and grime that soiled her finger. “That?” he gasped, stunned by a feeling of misery and helplessness. “Nat and I are engaged,” she said in a low voice without answering his question. “Just since last night.” There was nothing more to be said. The banal wishes for happiness would not rise to his lips. He looked at her intently for a moment, saw her eyes again drop, and walked away. He was suddenly tired and wanted to go home and rest. The reaction of his nervous and physical strain had set in. The hundred yards to his own gateway was a triumphal procession, but he scarcely realized it. Somehow he answered the acclamations that were heaped upon him. He smiled, but he did not know how. At the gate some one was waiting for him. At first he thought it was his mother, but he suddenly saw that it was Elsa Mallaby. He told himself that she must have come down to the village to watch the fire, and wondered why she was in that particular place. “Code,” she cried, her face flushed with glad pride, “you were splendid! That was the bravest thing I ever heard of in my life. I knew you would do it!” He smiled mechanically, thanked her, and passed on while she gazed after him, hurt and struck silent by the cold misery in his face. “I wonder,” she said to herself slowly, “whether something besides what I told him has happened to him to-night?” CHAPTER IV REFUGEES It was almost one o’clock in the morning when Code went into the parlor of his mother’s cottage and sank down upon the ancient plush sofa. His eyes ached, and the back of his head and neck, where the fire had singed him, were throbbing painfully. There was apparently no one at home. Even little Josie, the orphan that helped his mother, seemed to have been drawn out into the road by the excitement of the night, and the house, except for a single lamp burning on the table, was in darkness. He thought of going up-stairs to bed, but remembered that his mother was not in, and decided he would rest a little while and then go out and find her. Suddenly it seemed very luxurious and grateful to be able to stretch at full length after so much labor, and within a few minutes this sense of luxury had become a pleasant oblivion. Voices and a bright light woke him up. Dazed and alarmed, he struggled to a sitting posture, but a gently firm hand pushed him down again and he heard his mother’s voice. “Lay down again, Code,” she said. “You must be pretty well beat out with all you’ve done to-night. We’ve just got some friends for the night. Poor boy, let me see your burns!” 27 28 29 30 Schofield, who had guided schooners for years through the gales and shoals of the Bay of Fundy without a qualm, became red and ashamed at his mother’s babying. Rubbing his sleepy eyes, he sat up again determinedly and made an effort to greet the company who, he knew, had come into the room with his mother. Across the room, near the old melodeon, sat Nellie Tanner, holding little Bige and smiling wanly at him. The other two children leaned against her, asleep on either side. “Don’t get up, Code,” she said. “You’ve earned your rest more than any man in Freekirk Head to-night. I’m afraid, though, we’re going to make more trouble for you. Ma Schofield wouldn’t let me go anywhere else but here till the Rosan gets back from St. John’s. “Oh, I hate to think of their coming! They’ll sail around Flag Point and look for the kiddies waving in front of the house. And they won’t even see any house; but, thanks to you, Code, they’ll see the kiddies.” He knew by the tense, strained tone of her voice that she was very near the breaking-point, and his whole being yearned to comfort her and try to make her happy. Cursing himself for a lazy dolt, he sprang up and walked over toward her. “Now, you just let me handle this, Nellie,” he said, “and we’ll soon have Tommie and Mary and Bige all curled up on that sofa like three kittens.” With a sigh of ineffable relief she resigned the dead weight in her weary arms to him, and he, stepping softly, and holding him gently as a woman, soon had the boy more comfortable than he had been for hours. Mary and Tommie followed, and then Nellie, free of her responsibility at last, bent forward, put her elbows on her knees, and wept. Code, racked and embarrassed, looked around for his mother, but that mainstay was nowhere in sight. He thought of whistling, so as to appear unconscious of her tears, but concluded that would be merely rude. To take up a paper or book and read it in the face of a woman’s weeping appeared hideous, although for the first time in many months, he felt irresistibly drawn to the ancient and dusty volumes in the glass-doored bookcase. He compromised by turning his back on the affecting sight, thrusting his hands in his pockets, and studying the remarkably straight line formed by the abrupt junction of the wall and the ceiling. “Do you mind if I cry, C––Code?” sobbed the girl, apparently realizing their position for the first time. “No! Go right ahead!” he cried as heartily as though some one had asked for a match. He was intensely happy that the matter was settled between them. Now the harder she cried the more he liked it, for they understood one another. So she cried and he walked softly about, his hands in his pockets and his lips puckered for the whistle that he did not dare permit himself. Ma Schofield interrupted this near-domestic scene by her arrival, carrying a tray, on which were several glasses covered with a film of frost and out of which appeared little green forests. Code ceased to think about whistling. “Oh, Ma Schofield, what have you done?” cried Nellie, her tears for the moment forgetting to flow as her widening eyes took in the delights of the frosted glasses and piles of cake behind them. “Done?” queried ma. “I haven’t done anything but what my conscience tells me ought to be done. If yours cal’lates to disturb you some you can go right on up to your room, lamb, for you must be dead with lugging them children around.” Nellie’s tears disappeared not to return. She shook her head. “No, ma,” she said; “my conscience is just like them children––sleeping so hard it would take Gabriel’s trumpet to wake ’em up. It’s more tired than I am.” “All right,” said ma, with finality; “we will now proceed to refresh ourselves.” It was two o’clock before they separated for the remainder of the night. Code’s room, with its big mahogany double bed, was given over to Nellie and the children while he gladly resigned himself to the humpy plush sofa. By this time they had received news from half a dozen neighbors that Bill Boughton’s general store had been only half destroyed and that the contents had all been saved. The wharfs and fish-houses were at last burning and property on the leeward side of the flames was declared to be safe. A general exodus began along the King’s Road. Men who had galloped up from Great Harbor, with an ax in one hand and a bucket in the other, mounted their horses and rode away. Others from Hayward’s Cove and Castalia, who had driven in buggies and buckboards, collected their families and departed. The King’s Road was the scene of a long procession, as though the people of Freekirk Head were evacuating the town. A detachment of men under Squire Hardy’s orders remained about the danger zone ready to check any further advance of the flames or to rouse the town to further resistance should this become necessary. But for the most part the people of the village returned to their homes. Wide-awake and nervous, Schofield lay open-eyed upon the couch while unbidden thoughts raced through his brain. 31 32 33 34 The very fact of his sleeping on the plush couch was enough to bring to his mind the memory of one whom he had irretrievably lost on this memorable night. Was she not at this moment under his own roof, miserable and nearly destitute? He knew that, as long as he might live, his humble room up-stairs would never be the same again. It had been made a place sweet and full of wonder by the very fact that she was in it. Never again, he knew, could he enter it without its being faintly fragrant of her who, all his life, he had considered the divinest created thing on earth. By her presence she had sanctified it and made of it a shrine for his meditative and wakeful hours. Ever since they had gone to school together, hand in hand, the names of Nellie Tanner and Code Schofield had been linked in the mouths of Grande Mignon busybodies. Living all their lives two doors away, they had grown up in that careless intimacy of constant association that is unconscious of its own power until such intimacy is removed. To-night the shock had come. It was not that Code had taken for granted that Nellie would marry him. Never in his life had he told her that he loved her. It is not the habit of men who rove the seas to keep those they love constantly supplied with literature or confectionery, or to waste too many words in the language of devotion. He admitted frankly to himself that he had always hoped to marry her when he had acquired the quarter interest in Bill Boughton’s fishstand that had been promised him, but he had not told her so, nor did he know that she would accept him. The idea had been one to be thought of only at times of quietness and confidence in his future such as come to every man. But he had not reckoned on Nat Burns. He had not realized quite to what an extent Burns had made progress. He recalled, now that it was brought forcibly home to him, that Nat had been constantly at the Tanners’ for the last four or five months. But Code had thought nothing of this, for Nat had paid similar court at times to others of the girls of Freekirk Head. He was, in fact, considered the village beau. And Nellie herself had told him nothing. There had been a modest shyness about her in their relations that had kept him at an exasperating and piquant distance. Well, everything was over now, he told himself. He could take his defeat since Nellie did not care for him. Then he suddenly recalled Burns’s actions and manner of speaking during the harrowing moments of the fire. “I wonder if Nat really loves her?” he asked himself. “And if not, why did he become engaged?” CHAPTER V STARTLING NEWS The home-coming of Captain Bijonah Tanner and his wife did not provide the thrill looked for by the more morbid inhabitants of Freekirk Head. In the excitement of the fire all hands had forgotten that cable communication between Mignon and the mainland was unbroken. The operator, in the pursuance of his duty, had sent word of the fire to Eastport, and then concocted some cable despatches for Boston and Portland papers that left nothing to be desired from the viewpoint of sensationalism. In his zeal for filling space and eking out his slender income, the operator left nothing standing on Grande Mignon except the eternal rocks and the lighthouse. It was such an account that Bijonah Tanner fed upon that morning in the tiny cabin of the Rosan, and half an hour after he had read it he was under way. Special mention had been made of Code Schofield’s rescue of little Bige, with a sentence added that the Tanner place had been wiped out. With their minds filled with desperate scenes of cataclysm and ruin, the Tanners raced the complaining Rosan around Flag Point six hours later, only to fall upon one another and dance for joy at the sight of the village nestling as of yore against the green mountains and gleaming white in the descending sun. An acrid smell and a smudge of smoke told of what had really been, and a black heap of ruins where the familiar house had stood for so long confirmed their fears for their own property; but to see the village content and smiling, except for a poor building or two, was joy enough to overbalance the personal loss. So those who expected a tearful and emotional home-coming were disappointed. Code met the dory that rowed ashore after Bijonah had made fast to his mooring in the little cove that was the roadstead for the fishing fleet. He had half expected to share the duty with Nat Burns since the recent change in his relations to the Tanners, but Burns did not put in an appearance, although it was three o’clock in the afternoon. Bijonah shook hands with him, and Ma Tanner kissed him, the latter ceremony being a baptism of happy tears that all were safe and alive. Bijonah cleared his voice and pulled hard at his beard. 35 36 37 38 “Understand you’re quite a hero, Code,” he ventured bluffly, careful to conceal any emotion, but resolved to give the occasion its due. “Oh, rot, captain!” said Code equally bluffly, and the ceremony was over. But not so with Ma Tanner. She wept and laughed over the preserver of her offspring, and called him so many exalting names that he was glad to turn her over to Nellie and his mother at the Schofield gate. Hot and flushed with the notoriety she had given him along the main road, he retired to the corner shop and drank wonderful cold ginger-beer out of a white stone jug until his temperature had returned to normal. But later he returned to the house, and found the Tanners about to depart. The widow Sprague, near the Odd Fellows’ Hall, who lived, as she expressed it, “all deserted and alone,” had agreed to take the family into her rambling cottage. Luke Fraser had brought his truck-cart up alongside the rescued Tanner belongings, and they were already half loaded. “Can you come down to the widdy’s to-night, Code?” asked Bijonah. “I’ve got somethin’ to tell ye that ought to int’rest ye consid’able.” “Yes, I’ll be there about eight,” was the reply as Schofield joined in loading the truck. He found the captain that night smoking a pipe on the low front porch of the Widow Sprague’s cottage, evidently very much at home. Bijonah motioned him to a chair and proffered a cigar with a slightly self-conscious air. Inside the house, Code could hear the sound of people moving about and the voice of a woman singing low, as though to a child. He told himself without question that this was Nellie getting the kiddies to sleep. “A feller hears queer things over in St. John’s sometimes,” announced Bijonah suddenly, sucking at his pipe. “Yes.” “An’ this time I heard somethin’ about you.” “Me? I don’t know three people in St. John’s.” “Guess I met one of the three, then.” “Where? How? Who was it?” Bijonah Tanner coughed and shifted uneasily in his chair. “Wal,” he said, “I was takin’ a little turn along the water-front, just a leetle turn, as the wife will tell you, when I dropped into a––er––that is––a rum-shop and heard three men at the table next to mine talking about you.” Schofield smiled broadly in the darkness. Bijonah’s little turns along the water-front of St. John’s or any other port had been the subject for much prayer and supplication in the hearts of many devout persons thoroughly interested in their neighbor’s welfare. And of late years Ma Tanner had been making trips with him to supply stimulus to his conscience. “What were they talking about?” So far from being suspicious, Code was merely idly curious of the gossip about him. “My boy,” said Tanner, suddenly grave, “I was the best friend your father had for forty years, and I’m goin’ to try and be as good a friend to his son. But you mustn’t mind what I tell ye.” “I won’t, captain. Go ahead,” said Code, his interest awakening. “Wal, them men was talkin’ about the loss of the old May Schofield, and one of ’em in particular allowed as how he didn’t think it should have foundered when it did. What d’ye think of that?” Schofield had stiffened in his chair as though undergoing a spasm of pain. The sentences smote him between the eyes of his sensibilities. Had it come to this, that his name was being bandied dishonorably about the barrooms of St. John’s? If so, how and why? “Then I suppose you’ve heard the talk in Grande Mignon before this?” “Yes, Code, I have; and I’ve called every man a liar that said anything definite against you. I’m gettin’ old, but there ain’t very many men here able enough to shove that name back down my throat, an’ I notice none of ’em tried. It’s all idle talk, that’s all; an’ there ain’t a soul that can prove a single thing against you, even cowardice. An’ that’s more’n can be said o’ some men in this village.” Code was grateful, and he said so. It was something to find a friend...