Strangers in Bully Bay

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

STRANGERS IN BULLY BAY

By THEODORE GOODRIDGE ROBERTS

 

THE story is still told in Bully Bay, though the thing happened sixty years ago. I heard it from old Mother Finch—Mother Finch, who used to be Molly Nolan of the blue eyes and pink cheeks and round, milk-white neck. She is nearing her eightieth birthday now, and has a great-grandson old enough and able enough to go out to the fishing-grounds in his father's skiff. Her eyes are not strikingly blue now. Tears have faded them, I suppose. Her neck is hidden now by a folded shawl in which she muffles her sharp chin, and I imagine that it is no longer round or white or in any way alluring. Her voice is cracked and thin as a nor'-west wind over a frosty roof. She uses strange words. She smokes a black pipe charged with rank tobacco.

This is the story that I heard from Mother Finch last winter in Bully Bay, retold in language more intelligible to the civilised public than her own.

 

All the lads in Bully Bay, and most of them in Squid Harbour, ten miles down the coast, were in love with Molly Nolan; but Tim Finch was the boy who caught the fancy of her heart and eye in return. Tim loved her to distraction, but he was a lad of spirit, and had a thought in his mind to better his fortune before taking a wife. He was desperately weary of the shore-fishing and its scanty rewards, so he dreamed some brave dreams and interpreted them to Molly, then kissed her and set out for Harbour Grace. In that fine town he signed on for a voyage to South America, and from the grey wharf of Munnson & Co. he sailed away one grey morning in the barquentine Flora.

Tim Finch was so little of a scholar that he could not write even his own name. Molly was as ignorant of such things as Tim. Needless to say, they did not correspond. Months passed without any word of Tim being received in Bully Bay. Molly missed him cruelly, and worried about him. She lost nights of sleep in wondering miserably why she had let him go. So February, March, and April wore heavily away, dragging every hour across the heart of Molly Nolan like a link in a heavy chain.

Early in May, Skipper Kelly sailed around to Harbour Grace for a freight of hard bread, twine, salt, and other staple articles of trade in and about Bully Bay. He won back to Bully Bay on the seventeenth day of the month, with bitter news and a passenger. Because of the news, but slight attention was paid to the fore-and-after's passenger during the hour of landing. In Harbour Grace, Skipper Kelly had heard that the barquentine Flora had been wrecked in the Caribbean Sea, somewhere to the north and west of St. Kitts, with a total loss of vessel, cargo, and crew.

Molly Nolan didn't show herself outside her father's cabin for a week after that.

The stranger whom Skipper Kelly had brought from Harbour Grace was a young man of unusual and distinguished appearance. He did not belong to Harbour Grace. He gave his name as John McGrath, and admitted that he was the son of an Irishman. It seems that he had come to Bully Bay for rest and opportunity for study. He wore broadcloth and clean white linen every day. Though gracious of manner and smooth of tongue, he answered few questions. He had gold in his pocket, and his luggage consisted of several leather bags and two heavy boxes. His manner was detached but courteous.

He rented a two-roomed cabin which stood at the back of the harbour, above and behind the other cabins, from Skipper Kelly; but he never invited his neighbours in to warm his house for him. Outside his own door he was friendly enough, in his own superior and detached way. He frequently entered the huts of the needy with gifts of tea, tobacco, or snuff. He gave three bottles of brandy to old Tom Dodd, whose life was flickering, blankets to Widow Burke, and thirty silver half-dollars to another poor woman. Those thirty big silver coins started the story that he manufactured money in his cabin, and all the people hoped that he would continue to manufacture it. They did not hold it against him. He was a grand customer for Skipper Kelly.

Skipper Kelly had heard more about Mr. McGrath than he cared to repeat. A goose that laid golden eggs, or even silver eggs, was sure to receive proper attention at the skipper's hands. In Harbour Grace he had been told that the stranger had arrived at that port in a schooner belonging to the southern coast of the island, and he had heard a rumour in Pat Hawkins's shebeen that the stranger had come to Newfoundland from the little French island of St. Pierre. All this the skipper kept to himself. He did not mention it even to Mr. McGrath.

May passed, but June did not awaken Molly Nolan's benumbed heart or solve the mystery of John McGrath; but it was in June that the stranger first spoke to Molly. He met her face to face one morning on the land-wash, halted, lifted his hat, and bowed and regarded her with kind but pensive eyes. They were beautiful eyes, of so dark a grey as to appear black in some lights; but far back in them, deep beneath the clear lights of sadness and kindness, lurked a strange cross-flicker of fire that daunted the girl. Her blue eyes lowered before his unblinking gaze.

"You are sad," he said, in a deep and musical voice. "Your heart is heavy with the misery about you—the misery to which you were born."

She made no reply. She did not understand. He stepped aside and passed her with bowed head.

After that she listened to the nightly talks of her father and brothers about the stranger's affairs. Up to that time she had paid no attention to them. The men were of the opinion that McGrath was not only a coiner, but that he possessed the secret of turning certain materials into the precious metals. They had seen him wandering among the rocks and over the barrens, as if in search of something. Peter Walsh had rebuilt his chimney for him. Heavy blankets were fastened across his windows day and night, but not so securely but that fingers of violent red light had been discerned about the window casings as late as two o'clock in the morning. And the new chimney had been seen to throw out sparks and flames many times, always after midnight.

"But he be's free wid the stuff he makes," said one of the boys. "He give Peter Walsh three gold pieces for the work on the chimley, an' only yesterday he throwed a dollar to little Bill Dodd."

"I wishes to Heaven there be'd more like 'im on this coast," said the father. "But we'll keep it mum, b'ys. If the mafchants i' St. John's an' Harbour Grace heared talk of it, or the Governor, the police would be sent round to take 'im away to prison—aye, that they would! It be's dead agin the law for anyone, save the King an' the Governor, to make money, an' the rich marchants to git it an' have the spendin' of it."

Molly's flicker of interest in the mysterious stranger was not strong enough to lighten anything of her weight of grief. Shortly after the first meeting with McGrath, she awoke one morning before dawn, sick and restless with her misery. She slipped from her blankets, dressed, and left the stuffy cabin. The stars were veiled. She wandered aimlessly upward toward the top of the broken cliff and the wide barrens beyond. She rounded a corner of rock, and halted at the sight of a pulsing red radiance and pulsing clouds of sparks at the crown of the stranger's chimney. She knew that he was burning coals under a forced draught, even as Con Kelly, the skipper's brother, burned them in his forge to bring iron to a crawling white heat. No doubt he was even now fusing some common earth or rock into gold. She was chilled with awe, and for a little while forgot her grief.

She took another path, and so gave the stranger's cabin a wide berth in ascending to the edge of the barren. From that commanding position she watched the pulsing fire of the chimney with fascinated eyes until it fell at last and failed to flare up again. Then she turned her gaze to the east, and saw the dawn lighten like the opening of a grey eye along the sea's edge. The windows of the cabins winked to yellow in the gloom beneath her. The light in the east washed wide and high, and took on a rosy tinge. She scanned the empty sea with longing eyes, then started listlessly down the path. Near McGrath's hut she paused for a moment. The air was heavy with a bitter, stinging odour, which was unlike anything she had ever smelled before.

The men and boys went out to the fishing in their grey skiffs. It was still early in the morning when Molly Nolan went over to a neighbour's hut, where a child of seven years had been ill for two or three days. She heard the sobbing and moaning of women from within, and, before her foot had touched the threshold, the door opened and John McGrath came out. His thin, clean-shaven face was bloodless, and his wonderful eyes were glowing red at their depths. He gripped one of the girl's wrists with fingers hard as iron.

"He is dead!" he cried passionately. "Dead! Dead of a little cold, because he had no strength to fight against it. He has been starved since he was born—and before he was born! Some of us live and grow strong on starvation, but most of us die. But the sun is rising—the world is awaking—the starved and the down-trodden are beginning to wonder, to question, to turn their hungry eyes toward the gilded sources of their misery! When I was a child, I saw my mother die for want of food! I saw the police, officers of the law, tools of the rich, lead my father away to prison because he had taken bread from the rich with which to feed his starving wife and children. But the poor will arise and strike! The monsters of greed and selfishness who grind us down, and starve our bodies and our souls, will be dragged down from their high places! Nay, rather will they be sent higher—scattered, dismembered, uncrowned!"

He laughed wildly, bitterly, and shook the girl in the violence of his agitation. His eyes were terrible to behold.

"And I am one of the chosen instruments of their undoing!" he exclaimed. "I have the brain and the heart for the task. Little do they guess the fate that is even now being shaped for them here in Bully Bay!"

Molly was afraid. She pulled herself free of him and ran home. He did not follow her. He did not even look after her. It would almost seem that he was unaware of her agitated departure.

It was mid-afternoon of the tenth day of July when Molly Nolan saw the answer to her prayers. She was moping in the cabin. The men were away at the fishing, and her mother was down at the drying stages, turning over the split fish in the wind and sunshine. Molly had been excused from work that day, for the misery of her heart was affecting her bodily health.

She heard a step on the stone before the door, and turned in time to see the door open and Tim Finch enter the room—Tim Finch, her lover, who had gone down with the Flora, in April, in some surf-smoked corner of a distant sea. She did not see the other man at Tim's shoulder, for a black curtain fell before her eyes. She screamed and sank to the floor in a swoon.

When she regained consciousness and opened her eyes, she felt Tim's arms around her, and looked up into his face. She saw that his cheeks were thinner than she had known them, and that his whole face was aged and careworn. But it was Tim—Tim in the flesh—and not a ghost from some weltering sea cave. His eyes were brighter and hungrier than of old, but no less tender. The old light of love was in them. She put up a hand and touched his face.

"I feared ye were dead," she whispered. "They told me as how ye were drownded."

And then, for the first time, she saw Nicholas Barrow, the man who had entered the cabin at Tim's heels. She gazed up at him in wide-eyed dismay and inquiry past Tim's lean jaw. Tim twisted his neck to follow her glance. His face flushed darkly.

"Can't ye wait outside a minute?" he exclaimed fretfully.

The other smiled, turned slowly, and left the room. He was a tall man, lean and well-built, and maybe a few years older than Tim. His eyes were dark brown, his face was long and warmly tinted, his dark hair was worn long about his ears. He had little rings of gold in his ears.

"That be's Nick Barrow, a shipmate o' mine," said Tim. "We was wrecked together an' saved together, an' he come home wid me—blast 'im!"

For a week Molly was happy, and the bloom returned to her cheeks and the colour to her eyes. Her lost lover was alive and at her side again. The hungry, cheating sea had been cheated of him. Tim's story of his escape from death was that he and Barrow only of the barquentine's company had won ashore from the breaking wreck.

They had fought gigantic walls of green water and hissing foam, been rolled and beaten upon reefs of coral, and at last had been tossed unconscious upon a thin strip of spray-veiled sand. They had snatched a little oaken breaker of water and several packages of food from the surf.

Slowly and painfully they had made their way from one seething reef to another, from one smothered cay to another, until they had reached at last an isle of sand and coral rock upon which grew half a dozen cocoanut trees, a few white wood saplings, and a thicket of sea-grapes. There they had existed miserably for ten or twelve days, at the end of which time they had been sighted and taken off by a Spanish brig bound for Bahia.

Having no power of choosing their course, they, too, had gone to Bahia, and they had worked like dogs for their passage. After assisting in the unloading and loading of the Spanish brig, they had obtained berths aboard a big American schooner freighted with coffee and bound for New York. From New York they had worked their way northward, and here they were in Bully Bay. That was the story as told by Tim Finch and agreed to in silence by Nicholas Barrow.

Tim was an orphan. Nick Barrow lived with him. Tim owned a skiff, and in it went out to the fishing; but Barrow remained ashore and smoked his pipe in idleness, like an old woman or a gentleman. And yet Barrow was as able to work as Tim or any other man in the harbour; and the folk considered Tim a fool for supporting his shipmate in idleness. They wondered if the poor lad had suffered an injury to his head when the surf was knocking him about on the reefs of coral. They thought it likely.

Nicholas Barrow was never without a few coins to jangle in his pocket. He spent most of his idle hours close to Molly Nolan, entertaining her with stories of ships and cities and strange seas. Sometimes he even helped her at her work on the drying stages. Molly was interested in his stories, but she would have been better pleased had she heard them from Tim.

Molly was happy for a week, and then Tim's manner toward her and toward the world began to change. He avoided her. Of that there could be no mistake, for she was not the only one to notice it. His face became thinner and more haggard day by day. He looked as if he carried the black weight of all the world's care on his shoulders, and the tears of all its griefs in his breast. When she first saw this change, she clasped him in her arms, clung to him, and questioned him.

"It bain't nothin'," he groaned. "Sure, I loves ye, Molly, an' may the divil throttle me else! I bain't feelin' jist right, girl."

She saw torment in his honest eyes—torment writhing under a film of tears. She kissed him. He crushed her to him, pressing hot lips on her mouth and eyes.

"I loves ye!" he whispered violently, despairingly. "I'll watch ye safe if they kills me for it!"

Then he freed himself from her embrace and fled.

Fear, anxiety, and bewilderment kept sleep from Molly's humble couch that night. Early in the morning she was down on the land-wash, waiting for him; but he did not come to his skiff that day, or go out to the fishing. He wandered far about the barrens through the bright and empty hours, and did not return to his cabin until late at night. That was the commencement of his mad and mysterious behaviour, and that was the way he carried on day after day, week after week. Molly could only think that his mind had given way, and others were with her in that belief. Nicholas Barrow expressed himself as being of the same opinion, and told Molly of a day on that sandy, sun-beaten patch of sand and rock when Tim had raved like a maniac for hours.

"It was the sun hit him," said Nick, "an' he ain't bin the same since. He gits queer every now an' agin. The sun got clean into his brain, I reckon. I've knowed other men who was sunstruck like that, an' they never got better of it. That's why I come to Bully Bay with him—to see him safe home. Some die an' some go ravin' mad. There was one lad I used to know, from my own town in Nova Scotia, who come home from a v'yage an' killed his own wife. He'd bin sunstruck, same as poor Tim."

Molly's brain accepted this, but her heart refused it. Her heart told her that something more terrible than sunstroke was ailing Tim Finch—something more terrible, but not incurable. Her heart distrusted Nicholas Barrow.

Nicholas divided his time and attention between Molly Nolan and John McGrath. He courted Molly openly and McGrath covertly. He listened keenly to all that was said in the little harbour about the strange young Irishman and his stranger works and ways. He believed all that he heard about the manufacture of gold and silver. He was only an able seaman, after all, and this happened sixty years ago. So he spied upon McGrath, usually devoting the small, black hours of the morning to his spying. He could see nothing through the blanketed windows.

One morning, as chance would have it, the Irishman opened his door suddenly and discovered Nicholas skulking against the side of the cabin. The sailor caught a brief glimpse of an interior as red as a furnace, and then he caught McGrath's fist on his ear. It was over in half a minute, and that was not a second too soon for Nicholas Barrow. The alchemist slipped back into the cabin and bolted the strong door, and the sailor slunk away to his bed, wiping blood from his face and vowing vengeance.

Nicholas remained in retirement throughout the day, and bathed his face and head frequently. He was still determined upon revenge, but he would not lift his hand against McGrath until he had discovered McGrath's secret. He sat alone in Tim's cabin, for Tim was wandering abroad on the barrens behind the harbour. The dusk of evening thickened at the window. Suddenly the door opened and John McGrath himself stepped into the room. Nicholas jumped to his feet.

"Sit down!" said the visitor coolly. "I've come to warn you that if I catch you spying around my cabin again, day or night, I'll kill you! I'd be sorry to have to do it, but the world can't afford to have my great work interrupted or endangered. Remember!"

II.

By this time it was the belief of every man, woman, and child in Bully Bay that Tim Finch was insane, with the exception of Molly Nolan and of Nicholas Barrow, perhaps. They believed the story of the sunstroke. Tim continued to keep away from Molly, but he made no effort to leave the harbour. He did not fish now, but wandered about the coast and abroad on the barrens, more idle than his shipmate. On fine nights he lay out in the woods of spruce above the bay, or among the rocks down by the tide. On foul nights he took shelter in his cabin, but he never exchanged word or glance with Nick Barrow. His attitude seemed to amuse Nicholas.

One evening Molly lay in wait for her mad lover in a little patch of spruce tuck on the barren, and caught him fairly. She clung to the front of his rough coat with both hands and held on desperately.

"Be ye mad, Tim?" she cried. "Be ye gone ravin' mad? Have ye forgot how to love me? Look me in the eye, lad, an' tell me true!"

He looked her fairly in the eyes. A tortured soul looked out of his. She shuddered and hid her face against his breast.

"Mad!" he cried. "Holy saints, but I'll soon be ravin' mad! But if he don't go away—if he don't soon—mad or sane, I'll have his life!"

"Drive him out o' the harbour, an' come back yerself!" sobbed the girl. "He he's wantin' me to—to go away wid him! An' they all says as how ye be's mad, Tim."

"Not yet, for the love o' Heaven!" he replied harshly. "I bain't mad yet, an' maybe he'll weary of it, an' go away of his own free will. But he'll never take ye wid him, Molly! I'll kill him first—aye, murder him!"

He kissed the top of her bowed head, then suddenly gripped her clinging hands in his, and loosed their hold and fled from her into the dusk and vague shadows of the barrens. She flung herself on the moss, and lay there sobbing for several minutes. Her brain was numb with the mystery of it all, and her heart was torn with pity for Tim and for herself. At last she got to her feet and returned to the harbour and her father's cabin; and slowly a little spark of hope brightened and grew to a flame in her heart. Tim was not insane, and he still loved her!

Nicholas Barrow did not waver in his determination to discover the alchemist's secret, but he went about his spying even more cautiously than before. He felt that the grey-eyed one had promised no more than he meant to perform when he spoke of killing. On the second, third, and fourth days after his beating he followed Molly Nolan like a shadow, whispering to her what a rich man he was, and begging for her promise to go away with him to his fine home up along in Nova Scotia.

The girl pretended to listen, for she was afraid of him—afraid of him for Tim's sake. Her love and her woman's wit told her that it was this tall sailor, and not a stroke of the sun, that was playing the devil with poor Tim. She smiled and blushed at his talk, and avoided his kisses and embraces by only fractions of inches, and all the while hate rankled in her, and her fingers twitched to be at his throat.

On the fifth day after the violent meeting between John McGrath and Nicholas Barrow, a schooner from the Labrador fishing-grounds went on the outer fangs of the Figgy Duff Rocks in a fog and a heavy run of sea. She had fishermen and their families and their fortune aboard—a dozen men and lads, five women, some children, and a season's take of fish.

They were strangers to the folk of Bully Bay, but at the first distressful cry from the breaking schooner, every able-bodied human in the harbour turned out to the rescue. John McGrath locked his door behind him and hastened to the scene of the disaster. Tim Finch heard the cry and answered it. The little harbour emptied itself of all its inhabitants save the old, the very young, the sick, and Nicholas Barrow. In the excitement no one gave a thought to Nicholas.

After three starts and three failures, a broken skiff and a broken arm, five men got a boat to the rocks, and from the rocks got a line to the schooner. It was John McGrath who pulled stroke in that boat, and it was Tim Finch who steered her safe through the churning and sloshing of the surf.

Nicholas Barrow made his way through the fog to McGrath's cabin without loss of time. He carried an empty sack and an axe. With half a dozen well-placed and vigorous blows of the axe, he drove the frame of one of the windows inward. He crawled into the cabin, glanced quickly around him, then replaced the window. The air of the cabin was heavy with a strange, bitter smell. A forge, built of scraps of iron, stood in the chimney, and on it glowed a deep, still fire of coals. Near by stood a roughly-constructed bellows.

No gold was in sight, but in a corner, far from the fire, a stack of short, greyish-black sticks lay on a folded blanket. Those queer sticks caught Nick's eye and attention sharply. He did not doubt their significance for a moment, but stepped over to them, examined them closely, weighed them in his hands, sniffed at them.

He knew that this grey-black stuff was the gold—the wizard gold of John McGrath's manufacture—but he was not so sure whether it lay in his hand in a state of incompleteness or simply in a state of disguise. He would make it answer that question for itself. He put all of it in the sack except one stick, and carried the sack over to the fire and laid it on a corner of the makeshift forge.

For half a minute he stood and examined the little grey-black bar which he held in his hands, turning it over and over, as if he would tear McGrath's secret from it with the pull of his eyes. At last he leaned forward to put it to the test of fire. His right elbow pushed the sack, and it toppled over on its side, and a corner of it fell on the still, deep fire. A little flame shot up.

•••••

John McGrath was on the deck of the straining schooner, busy with the work of rescue, when the sudden, smashing report shook the clinging fog, and for a second drowned the bellowing of the seas. Never before had such a terrific sound been heard on that coast. McGrath held a child in his arms—arms strong as seasoned ashwood, but white of skin and curiously scarred about the wrists as if by fire. His embrace tightened convulsively upon the child until it cried out in pain. His face went grey as the dripping canvas above him. He laughed bitterly, and that sound brought the others out of their trance. Some of the women went fearfully back to the harbour, but John McGrath and Tim Finch and the fishermen continued at their work aboard the stricken schooner until every soul was safe on the land-wash.

II.

They found nothing but wreckage where McGrath's cabin had stood—wreckage of timber, of iron and stone, and of the body of Nicholas Barrow. John McGrath refused to answer any questions.

"The great work is put off for a little while," he said, "but, even so, there is one knave the less in the world."

They had to make what they could of that. They pitied him, seeing his suffering in his eyes, but there was no pity felt in that harbour for Nicholas Barrow. And it was then that the madness and strangeness passed away from Tim Finch. He looked at the shattered timbers of the cabin and the thing that had been his shipmate. For a second wonder held him, and then he turned and went to Molly Nolan. The light of torment was gone from his honest eyes, and the shadow of fear from his face. He took her in his arms and held her close while he whispered to her the truth of his madness.

Four men, not two, had saved themselves from the wreck of the Flora. Two had gone temporarily insane on the little island, with fear and the unrelenting torture of the sun, and Nicholas Barrow had been poisoned by something he had eaten. Tim alone was left whole of mind and body. The insane men had hidden the water. They had refused it to Tim and the sick man. Then they had suggested the killing of the sick man, so as to save provisions. More than that, they had attempted the murder twice before Tim had killed them both in a fair fight.

Barrow had seen the killing of the two, and had always kept it bright in his mind. He had seen the bodies buried, and had noted a wound in the skull of one that would last until the Day of Doom.

For his part, he had entertained no fear of the opening of those graves and the telling of the truth, for at the time of the rescue he had been found too weak to lift his hand, and worn to a skeleton by the wasting of the poison. So he had held tight to Tim, and Tim had worked for both of them. And so he had followed Tim to Bully Bay, pleased with the easy life and the sense of power.

He had desired Molly Nolan for himself before he had seen her many times, and had promptly told Tim to get out of the game, or be hanged by the neck for the murder of the mate and cook of the Flora.

Tim had not wanted to hang for the killing of those two madmen in fair fight, and he had not wanted to hang for the murder of Nicholas Barrow, if it could be avoided. So he had waited, hoping and praying that Heaven, or maybe just sailorman's luck, would take the decision and the execution out of his hands. And his prayers had been answered.

"But why didn't ye tell it all to me, instid o' hidin' away from me an' tearin' me poor heart?" she asked.

"I knowed the grand spirit o' ye too well, Molly," he answered. "I feared as how ye wouldn't wait, but would up an' kill the false beast wid yer own two hands! So I hid from ye, girl, an' I waited, all because o' me love for ye!"

John McGrath went away, taking the blessings of Bully Bay with him, and was never again seen on that coast.

 

To this day old Mother Finch, who used to be Molly Nolan, is firmly of the opinion that John McGrath made gold out of stones and earth, and that he lost the trick of it when the Devil, in the person of Nicholas Barrow, exploded his cabin and his gear with a blast of hell fire. But she is puzzled to know why Nicholas Barrow permitted his own destruction.

I told her what I know of John McGrath. I told her that it was not gold, but a terrible explosive that he had manufactured in Bully Bay; that something he had learned in Bully Bay had changed his views as to the best way of relieving the sufferings of the poor, and that, by kindness and the power of the tongue and pen, he had lightened many a rich man's pocket and many a poor man's heart. And I told her that he had died only a few years ago, beloved and respected by thousands.

But Mother Finch paid little attention to what I had to tell. Her mind was back sixty years in the past, and to her it seemed that the story had known its beginning and its end in Bully Bay.