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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Aye, skipper, aye," stammered Bill Brennen, huskily. The others breathed heavily, shuffled their feet, gripped the money in their pockets and glared at the yellow pieces still glowing in the lamplight. "Four shares still on the table," repeated the skipper. "Well, lads, one bes for Black Dennis Nolan."
"I seed a blue flare an' heared a gun a-firing to the sou'east o' the cove," bawled the visitor, in reply. The skipper opened the door. "Come in, lad! Come in!" he cried. He lit a candle and set to work swiftly pulling on his outer clothes and sea-boots. "There bes rum an' a mug, Pat. Help yerself an' then rouse the men," he said. "Tell Nick Terry an' Bill Brennen to get the gear together.
"Yet this same Montagu," observed one of the ringleaders, "when Hilyard was well-nigh at the gates of York, sallied out and defeated him, sans ruth, sans ceremony." "Yes, but he spared my life, and beheaded the dead body of poor Hugh Withers in my stead: for John Nevile is cunning, and he picks his nuts from the brennen without lesing his own paw.
The skipper, Bill Brennen and Nick Leary left their cabins stealthily about midnight, met on the snowy barren above the harbor, and tramped southward to the vicinity of Nolan's Cove. They worked for a little while in a clump of spruce-tuck, then moved off to another thicket about half a mile away, and there worked again.
Nick Leary, though a much younger man than Bill Brennen, possessed the same spirit of service. The three searched the barrens all day, from sun-up to dark, north, south and inland. It was a gray day, sloppy underfoot and raw overhead.
"Aye, skipper, sure ye could," said Bill Brennen; "but it bes like this wid us. Dick Lynch give us the slip this very day, wid a bottle o' rum in his belly an' the smoke of it in his head, an' a gun in his hand. Aye, skipper, an' we didn't larn it till only a minute ago from little Patsy Burke." "Aye, that bes the right o' it," broke in Nick Leary.
"What d'ye say to it, Bill Brennen?" he asked. Bill Brennen shuffled his big feet uneasily, and eyed the pistols askance. "Thank ye kindly, skipper. Ye speaks the truth," said he. "An' ye, Nick Leary?" "Ye bes skipper here, sure aye, and more nor skipper. But for ye we'd all be starved to death wid hunger an' cold," said Nick. "An' what says the rest o' ye?
John Darling was not honored by a visit from the skipper that day; but Bill Brennen carried food to him, made up a fire in the stove, and even loosed his bonds for a few minutes upon receiving his word of honor that he would not take advantage of the kindness by trying to escape. "What does Nolan intend to do with me?" asked Darling.
The mutineers had consumed the brandy, come to hot words over the sharing of the gold, dropped their dead and wounded, and commenced to curse, kick and hit at one another with clubs. Then Dick Lynch had put his knife into a young man named Pat Brennen, a nephew of the loyal Bill. Panic had brought the fight to a drunken, slobbering finish.
The folks were all in their cabins, save the skipper and Bill Brennen, who were digging the harbor's cache of jewelry from the head of a thicket of spruce-tuck. She let herself into the store and freed John Darling without striking a light. She placed the casket in his hand. "The skipper has yer pistols in his own pocket, so I couldn't git 'em for ye," she whispered.
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