weight. This time it was the skipper who tried to break the hold,
realizing that his advantage lay in his fists, and Quinn's in the
greater weight of body and greater strength of back and leg. So the
skipper twisted and pulled; but Quinn held tight, and slowly but surely
forced the younger man towards the edge of the cliff. Suddenly the
skipper drew his head back and brought it forward and downward again,
with all the force of his neck and shoulders, fair upon the bridge of
his antagonist's nose. Quinn staggered and for a second his muscles
relaxed; and in that second the skipper wrenched away from his grasp and
knocked him senseless to the ground.

"Lay there, ye scum!" cried Black Dennis Nolan, breathing heavily, and
wiping blood from his chin with the back of his hand. "Lay there an' be
damned to ye, if ye t'ink ye kin say 'nay' when Dennis Nolan says 'aye.'
If it didn't be for the childern ye bes father of, an' yer poor, dacent
woman, I'd t'row ye over the cliff."

Foxey Jack Quinn was in no condition to reply to the skipper's address.
In fact, he did not hear a word of it. Two of the men picked him up and
carried him down a steep and twisting path to his cabin at the back of
the harbor, above the green water and the gray drying-stages, and
beneath the edge of the vast and empty barren. He opened one eye as
they laid him on the bed in the one room of the cabin. He glared up at
the two men and then around at his horrified wife and children.

"Folks," said he, "I'll be sure the death o' Black Dennis Nolan. Aye, so
help me Saint Peter. I'll send 'im to hell, all suddent un' unready, for
the black deed he done this day!"

That was the first time the skipper showed the weight of his fist. His