sharp look-out for ships during bad weather
and at night. Should either of them remark any signs of a vessel in
distress he was to return to Chance Along at top speed, and report the
same. Nick Leary and Foxey Jack Quinn were older men than the skipper by
a few years, and the fathers of families--of half-starved families. Nick
was a mild lad; but Foxey Jack had a temper as hot as his hair.

"What bes yer idee, skipper?" asked Nick.

Dennis explained it briefly, having outlined his plans several times
before.

"An' how long does we have to stop away?" asked Nick.

"Five days. Yer watch'll be five days, an' then I'll be sendin' out two
more lads," replied the skipper.

Foxey Jack Quinn stood, without a word, his vicious face twisted with a
scowling sneer. Both men departed, one for the beach to the north and
the other for the Cove to the south, each carrying a kettle and bag of
provisions, a blanket and tarnished spy-glass. Black Dennis Nolan turned
to other work connected with the great scheme of transferring the
activities of Chance Along from the catching of fish to the catching of
maimed and broken ships. He set some of the old men and women to
splicing ropes, stronger and more active folk to drilling a hole in the
face of the cliff, near to the top of it and just to the right of the
entrance to the narrow harbor. Others, led by the skipper himself, set
to work at drilling holes in several of the great rocks that lay in the
green tide beyond the mouth of the harbor, their heavy crowns lifting
only a yard or two above the surface of the twisting currents. All this
was but the beginning of a task that would require weeks, perhaps
months, of labor to complete. It was Black Dennis Nolan's intention to
construct, by means of great iron rings, bolts and staples,
chain-cables, hawsers and life-lines, a solid net by the help of which
his people could extend their efforts at salving the valuables from a
fast-breaking vessel to the outermost rock of that dangerous
archipelago, even at the height of a storm--with luck. In the past, even
in his own time, several ships bound from Northern Europe for Quebec had
been driven and dragged from their course, shattered upon those rocks,
sucked off into deep water, and lost forever, without having contributed
so much as a bale of sail-cloth to the people of Chance Along. He was
determined that cases of this kind should not happen in the future. The
net was to be so arranged that the