f Chance Along. Ships went down in
battered fragments to their clashing sea-graves, which was bad, Heaven
knows, for the crews and the owners--but ashore, stalwart and gratified
folk who had noted the storms and the tides ate well and drank deep and
went warmly clad, who might otherwise have felt the gnawing of hunger
and the nip of the wind.

The people of Chance Along, with but a few exceptions, were Nolans,
Lynches, Learys and Brennens. Their forebears had settled at the back of
the cleft in the cliff a hundred years or more before the time of this
history. They had been at the beginning, and still were, ignorant and
primitive folk. Fishing in the treacherous sea beyond their sheltered
retreat had been their occupation for several generations, brightened
and diversified occasionally by a gathering of the fruits of storm. It
was not until Black Dennis Nolan's time, however, that the community
discovered that the offerings of the sea were sufficient--aye, more than
sufficient--for their needs. This discovery might easily have been made
by others than Black Dennis Nolan; but it required this man's daring
ingenuity and powers of command to make it possible to profit by the
discovery.

Black Dennis Nolan was but little more than a lad when he commenced the
formidable task of converting a poverty-stricken community of
cod-fishers into a band of daring, cunning, unscrupulous _wreckers_. He
possessed a dominating character, even in those days, and his father had
left him a small fore-and-aft schooner, a store well-stocked with
hand-lines, provisions and gear, and a record chalked up on the inside
of the door which showed, by signs and formulae unintelligible to the
stranger, every man in the harbor to be in his debt for flour, tea,
molasses, tobacco and several other necessities of life. So Black Dennis
Nolan was in a position, from the very first, to force the other men of
the place to conform to his plans and obey his orders--more or less.

For a time there were doubters and grumblers, old men who wagged their
heads, and young men who sneered covertly or jeered openly; and later,
as the rule of Dennis became absolute and somewhat tyrannical and the
hand of Dennis heavy upon men of independent ways of thought, there were
insurrections and mutinies. But Black Dennis Nolan was equal to every
difficulty, even from the beginning. Doubters were convinced that he saw
clearer than they, grumblers were satisfied, young men who je