he edges of black ice. A dull, vast
moaning that was scarcely a sound at all--something as vague, yet mighty
as silence itself--drifted over the barrens and over the sheltered
habitations out of the northwest.

When the skipper awoke in the morning the "flurry" was rolling over the
brink of the barren, and down upon Chance Along in full force. The
skipper piled dry wood--birch and splinters of wreckage--into the round
stove, until it roared a miniature challenge to the ice-freighted wind
outside. The bucket of water on the bench in the corner was frozen to
half its depth. He cut at it with a knife used for skinning seals, and
filled the tea-kettle with fragments of ice. His young brother Cormick
came stiffly down the ladder from the loft, and stood close to the stove
shivering.

"It bes desperate weather, Denny," said the lad. "Sure, I near froze in
my blankets."

"Aye, Cormy, but we bes snug enough, wid no call to go outside the
door," replied the skipper. "We has plenty o' wood an' plenty o' grub;
an' we'll never lack the one or t'other so long as I bes skipper o' this
harbor."

"Aye, Denny, we never et so well afore ye was skipper," returned
Cormick, looking at his brother in frank admiration. "Grub--aye, an'
gold too! I hears ye took a barrel o' money off that wrack, Denny."

"An' there'll be more wracks, Cormy, an' we'll take our pickin's from
every one," said the skipper. "Times bes changed, lad. The day was when
we took what the sea t'rowed up for us; but now we takes what we wants
an' leaves what we don't want to the sea."

At that moment the voice of old Mother Nolan sounded fretfully from the
next room.

"Denny! Cormy!" she called. "I bes fair perishin' to death in my bed.
The wind bes blowin' an' yowlin' t'rough this room like the whole end o'
the house was knocked out."

The skipper, who was as gentle with his old grandmother and as kind to
his young brother as the best man in the world could have been, crossed
the kitchen immediately and opened the door of the old woman's chamber.
Mother Nolan was sitting up in her bed with a blanket on her thin, bent
shoulders, and a red flannel night-cap on her gray head.

Her small face was pinched by cold and age, but her black eyes were
alive and erect.

"The mats be squirmin' and flappin' on the floor like live fish," she
exclaimed. "Saints presarve all poor creatures abroad this day on sea or
land! They'll be starved to death wid the cold, Denny, for bai