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[Illustration: "Oh let him go!" said a voice]




THE HARBOR OF DOUBT

BY

FRANK WILLIAMS

AUTHOR OF

THE WILDERNESS TRAIL

ILLUSTRATIONS BY

G. W. GAGE

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

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

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 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.

"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?"

"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,