The Cruise of the Shining Light   By: Norman Duncan (1871-1916)

BY

NORMAN DUNCAN

AUTHOR OF

"Doctor Luke of the Labrador", "The Way of the Sea"

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

MCMVII

Copyright, 1907, by Harper & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

Published April, 1907.

TO

MY ELDER BROTHER

ROBERT KENNEDY DUNCAN

THIS BOOK IS

AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE I. NICHOLAS TOP 1 II. AT THE SIGN OF THE ANCHOR AND CHAIN 10 III. THE CATECHISM AT TWIST TICKLE 27 IV. ON SINISTER BUSINESS 38 V. TAP TAP ON THE PAVEMENT 45 VI. THE FEET OF CHILDREN 54 VII. TWIN ISLANDS 69 VIII. A MAID O' WHISPER COVE 75 IX. AN AFFAIR OF THE HEART 89 X. IMPORTED DIRECT 104 XI. THE GRAY STRANGER 120 XII. NEED O' HASTE 138 XIII. JUDITH ABANDONED 154 XIV. THE TWENTY THIRD PSALM 169 XV. A MEASURE OF PRECAUTION 174 XVI. GREEN PASTURES: AN INTERLUDE 188 XVII. RUM AND RUIN 203 XVIII. A LEGACY OF LOVE 219 XIX. A WORD OF WARNING 230 XX. NO APOLOGY 243 XXI. FOOL'S FORTUNE 247 XXII. GATHERING WINDS 264 XXIII. THE TIDE RIP 276 XXIV. JOHN CATHER'S FATE 290 XXV. TO SEA 305 XXVI. THE DEVIL'S TEETH 323

THE CRUISE OF THE SHINING LIGHT

THE CRUISE OF THE SHINING LIGHT

I

NICHOLAS TOP

My uncle, Nicholas Top, of Twist Tickle, was of a cut so grotesque that folk forgot their manners when he stumped abroad. Bowling through the streets of St. John's, which twice a year he tapped with staff and wooden leg, myself in leading bowling cheerily, with his last rag spread, as he said, and be damned to the chart he left a swirling wake of amazement: craning necks, open mouths, round eyes, grins so frank, the beholders being taken unaware, that 'twas simple to distinguish hearts of pity from savage ones.

Small wonder they stared; my uncle was a broad, long bodied, scowling, grim lipped runt, with the arms and chest of an ape, a leg lacking, three fingers of the left hand gone at the knuckles, an ankle botched in the mending (the surgery his own), a jaw out of place, a round head set low between gigantic shoulders upon a thick neck: the whole forever clad in a fantastic miscellany of water side slops, wrinkled above, where he was large, flapping below, where he was lean, and chosen with a nautical contempt for fit and fashion, but with a mysteriously perverse regard for the value of a penny.

"An' how much, lad," says he, in the water side slop shops, "is a penny saved?"

'Twas strange that of all men he should teach me this old fashioned maxim as though 'twere meant for my own practice. 'Twas well enough for him, it seemed; but 'twas an incumbrance of wisdom in the singular case of the lad that was I.

"A penny made, sir," says I.

"Co' rect!" says he, with satisfaction.